For our online discussion in partnership with Schüco, an expert panel considered how architecture and urban design might respond to the the major demographic changes reshaping cities and society.
Many older people spend as much as 80 per cent of their time in their own homes, frequently alone and have few social contacts. Does this sound familiar? AT recently organised, with Schueco, a seminar on designing for an ageing population. While the Corona crisis forced a change in delivery method from a meeting at the Schueco showroom to a webinar with all participants in their own homes, it also provided a useful lesson.
Julia Park, head of housing research at Levitt Bernstein, has been immersed in the subject since she worked on the original HAPPI report on housing for older people in 2009, and has recently co-authored a book on the subject. She said, ‘In lockdown, we are experiencing what has been pretty normal for many older people.’ Our response to lockdown, she believes, should help to influence housing design.
Top: Hazelhurst Court, designed by Levitt Bernstein
Above: Clockwise from top left, panellists Julia Park (Julia Park, Head of Housing Research, Levitt Bernstein), Professor Malcolm Johnson (International Institute on Health & Ageing, University of Bristol), Maria Brenton (UK Cohousing’s Senior Cohousing Ambassador and trustee of the UK Cohousing Network Trust) and Matthias Hollwich (principal of New York-based practice HWKN, co-founder of Architizer.com and author of ‘New Aging: live smarter now to live better forever’
One place where lockdown has not been a problem is at OWCH, the award-winning Older Women’s Co-Housing in north London. The first and still the only project of its kind, having taken 18 years to get off the ground, It has, said Maria Brenton, UK Cohousing’s Senior Cohousing Ambassador, thrived. ‘It works through shared decision making, collaborative responsibility and mutual support,’ she said. ‘This has been really valuable under lockdown. The community is looking after itself beautifully. Morale is being maintained. It shows that this is a modern and viable alternative to the isolated lives that so many people live.’
Brenton does not like the term ‘retirement community’, saying that the oldest woman at OWCH is 90 and still working. Indeed, with numbers of older people rising rapidly and ‘senior housing’ encompassing anybody from 55 to 105, participants in the seminar were keen to stress that much of what should be done is simply good design. That whatever our age, this is design for ‘us’ and not for ‘them’.
New Ground, designed for OWCH by Pollard Thomas Edwards
New York based Matthias Hollwich, principal and co-founder of practice HWKN, has been looking at this idea of a continuum of design since, he said, he started preparing for his own mid=life crisis 10 years ago at the tender age of 38. His approach is encapsulated by the title of the book he co-authored with Bruce Mau Design, ‘New Aging – Live Smarter Now to Live Better Forever’. He’s developed the idea of ‘flex living’ – of apartments that have two front doors and two bedrooms, linked by a flexible space. These can offer a range of living arrangements, from a family home, to a residence and a sublet, to two friends living together or even a resident and a carer. ‘We have to think differently about architecture,’ he said, ‘and make small adjustments to everything, to enable everyone to participate in what they want.’
Flexible housing designed by HWKN
Malcolm Johnson is an academic and emeritus professor at the University of Bristol who has specialised in gerontology throughout his life. His close interest in architecture started a year ago when he was approached by the newly formed Guild Living which aims to create communities for urban later living in city centres. The intention is that design will be research based, with rigorous post-occupancy evaluation. This should, Johnson believes, integrate older people in communities, removing them from a lonely existence in what can too often, he said, be ‘an institution of one.’
Much is improving. Julia Park said that she has seen many more good designs since the first HAPPI report. But education of architects still ducks these issues, she said. And, she added, ‘We have to be smarter about incorporating features in homes that can’t be changed in future.’ Wider doorways, larger bathrooms and increased storage cannot be retrofitted easily. Better homes for an ageing population may just mean that we will have better homes, full stop.
