Imagine a community for later years living that engages the whole neighbourhood

Project Insight

By ensuring homes for older people and those needing care are set in the heart of the community, people can make a positive decision on how they want to live. An active landscape, centred around community spaces, creates a vibrant place that encourages social interaction and intergenerational connections.

Project Idea

Our feasibility study reinvents the traditional care home and independent living facility, instead providing a social community environment around a central plaza.

Project Design

With excellent daylight levels, plentiful views to natural surroundings, and outdoor spaces at every level, residents of the care home and independent living facility are fully connected with nature. The simple layout around courtyards provides easy orientation and clear wayfinding, which allows for maximum independence and encourages interaction and physical activity.

Care home residents are brought together in small housing groups which ensure a safe and secure, non-institutional feel. Generous windows and corridors provide places to rest and socialise, with a calm palette of natural materials. There are opportunities for personalisation with coloured doors to help residents locate their room and display cabinets to house familiar objects and stimulate conversation.

The buildings are located around a pedestrian focussed central plaza, where community hub facilities and social spaces form a lively heart to the development. The open nature of the hub provides a community focus, which attracts people of all ages from the neighbourhood to use the facilities and helps create a multi-generational environment.

Studies demonstrate that relationships between different generations provide multiple benefits for both younger and older people.

A rich landscape runs through the scheme, creating clear orientation from first entering the site, along with gardens and seating areas centrally, and informal planting and trees to the perimeter. The design provides opportunities to create a low carbon, biodiverse development ready for future generations.