Description
The brief for this project was to create a home for people with different needs. Old people as well as people who are connected to the community’s Psychiatric Health Services and Relief Efforts for Disabled People live in the 26 sheltered accommodation units. In addition there are two units which contain staff rooms and common rooms for the residents.
The apartments have a net living area of about 56 m². They are equipped to enable the residents to look after themselves. All apartments are accessible for disabled persons. In addition eight of the apartments are further equipped for disabled use and therefore contain kitchens with worktops and cupboards with lift mechanisms. All apartments have balconies.
The accommodation also houses areas designed to encourage social interaction among the residents, visitors or people living in the neighbourhood. These areas include a café, a large communal kitchen, meeting rooms, a reading room, exercise rooms with variable facilities and a workshop.
The two functions of the scheme, the public and the private, are planned to intertwine but also to stand out as individual forms. Design and choice of materials have been used to highlight this dualism, creating two separate buildings in one establishment: the long, curved, three-storey block of dwellings, whose external walls are clad with stained timber, contrasts with the flat, rectangular green planted roof of the Activity Centre, whose walls are clad in light-coloured brick. The curved apartment building intersects the Activity Centre, stamping its own imprint on the centre.
The apartments are situated along external galleries with a solid wood construction. Additional space at each private entrance provides a possibility for charging electric wheel chairs. The main entrance is situated on the northern side via a free standing common staircase and lift. The curved apartment block divides the site in two, enclosing a common garden to the south and separating it from the parking area near the entrance.
Drawings
Photos
Exterior view from the road of the apartments with the Activity Centre in the background
Interior view of the resident’s common room
Originally published in: Eckhard Feddersen, Insa Lüdtke, Living for the Elderly: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2011.