Aged care should be designed to encourage living in place, not ageing in place, writes Ken Blair.

Creating, eating, dancing, dating, visiting, learning, socialising, working, singing, shopping, engaging – not just ageing. The challenge for providers and designers of living environments for older people is to afford opportunities for all these activities and more, not in a prescriptive, functional way, but in an inclusive and flexible manner that responds to individual need.

Much has been written about models of living for the general population trying to identify the key elements necessary to establish successful communities or neighbourhoods. Foremost among those was Kevin Lynch in The Image of the City (1960), who identified paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks, and of the necessity to consider the design of each of these elements, but also of how they are connected to create a great place to live.

Communities for older people contain basically the same elements but have some additional features that designers need to consider. Principle among these is loss of mobility. This affects not only mobility to get from A to B, but also mobility to undertake basic living task independently.

General mobility restrictions suggest that a vertical model of development is move appropriate than a horizontal form, which has been the norm in Australia. Current planning and zoning regulations may need to change to permit such development in appropriate locations.

Community collaboration

While Lynch focused on the physical components of a community, of increasingly recognised importance is the need for diversity of activities to create a vital community. This has become more apparent as retirement villages and aged care communities have become larger, and, often, more mono-cultural.

While efforts have been made to include a wider range of activities within each village or aged care community, because they are age restricted, they lack the vitality and diversity of successful communities in the wider sense. Linkages with the wider community thus become more important. This has traditionally taken the role of the village or facility going out into the broader community via bus tours and shopping trips or groups coming into the village or to provide entertainment or services.

In the future, we may see a far more comprehensive and integrated collaboration with a range of community facilities provided on site to attract in a natural way the wider community. We have already seen examples of child care and aged care developments being co-located, but we may see a far broader range of activities in the future – arts centres, bistros, bookstores, health centres, gymnasiums, religious centres and more.

The reason developments have become increasingly monocultural is fairly obvious – ease of management – both in retirement villages and aged care communities. Called “sod off architecture” or “the secession of the successful”, gated retirement villages have appealed to the desire for security and privacy.

Undoubtedly, depending on location, some retirement villages have significant security issues, largely related to errant youth causing vandalism and similar acts of anti-social behaviour. Possibly a more vibrant community activity generated by functions located in the village may be a more effective deterrent to these anti-social behaviours.

Hierarchy of spaces

It is generally recognised that a range or hierarchy of spaces should be provided in aged care buildings to offer a diversity of living options for residents. Activating the corridor with improved transition between activity spaces has become part of the design process – that is corridors (a significant part of aged care buildings) are seen as activity spaces in their own right. Further development of the hierarchy of spaces concept has seen the development of the cluster or house model, which recognises the need for privacy and smaller daily living groups among older people. Various models of households have been explored, ranging from six to 12 persons to support the development of more meaningful relationships and quality of life.

Apart from the often claimed issues of economic viability with current funding models, there is a concern that discrete small households may in fact limit opportunities for living that larger communities provide.

The neighbourhood centre

How do we broaden the social and living opportunities for people living in a small scale household model? By linking the households with a neighbourhood centre.

The neighbourhood centre provides opportunities for residents to meet people from other households, to participate in social activities of a larger scale and to enjoy a variety of activity settings and therapy centres.

These neighbourhood centres can provide not only the link between household clusters, but also with the broader community, with bistros, chapels, fitness centres and retail centres. The extent of these will obviously depend on the scale of site development and the location. In some instances, it may be possible to link in to existing community facilities.

What’s new?

The concept of a hierarchy of spaces has been around for some time. Our firm was involved as architects with the design of linked households with a central main street, or neighbourhood centre, more than 10 years ago.

The change is one of emphasis, which recognises the changing needs of residents who are increasingly frail when entering residential care due largely to the growth in support services for independent living. This has been readily measured by the extent of assistance required by residents with daily living tasks, and also by the level of dementia now common among residents.

Thus, the household unit has become increasingly important to the current needs of the residents, with a lesser need for larger social and other living activities. The household unit could be re-asserted as the building block of living communities for older people for the future, but with a neighbourhood precinct available for the broader range of living activities.

Ken Blair is principal of Blair Architects. Email: kblair@blairarchitects.com.au