Description

The project consists of the replacement of the former housing with care apartments, the refurbishment of two existing 1960s tower blocks, and the construction of communal facilities for the elderly. The project is split into three separate phases, with the housing with care apartments having been completed in January 2004. The location is the suburb of Knotty Ash which is predominantly residential and remarkably “green”.

The practice’s winning scheme created a strategy that unites the whole site, utilising the analogy of a village with streets and a central green. The proposal involved the linking of the apartments within the existing tower blocks with the new sheltered housing apartments constructed either side of an internal street. Both elements converge at the central communal hub.

All apartments are positioned to benefit from an east or west orientation, with roadside or communal garden frontage. The two-storey housing with care facility consists of two banks of one/two bedroom apartments accessed from the safe environment of a central internal street. The internal street is designed as a common meeting place from which to enter individual dwellings. The heated linear route is lit and ventilated by a series of large rooflights that illuminate double-height spaces with planting and seating areas. First floor access is via a series of walkways. The competition concept to integrate the landscape with the development has been retained throughout the tenant consultation and detailed design period. The green roofs are a reaction to both environmental issues and increased thermal provision for the inhabitants and also create a significant visual roofscape seen by the majority of residents who occupy the eleven-storey blocks.

The central hub creates a single safe point of access to the development. The curved, colour-rendered wall can be identified from all areas of the site and provides orientation for residents with varying physical and mental ability.

The proposal for an integrated site, perceived and designed through commitment to the competition concept and responsive tenant participation, has been maintained. Indeed the ideas have been strengthened by existing residents who enjoy living in alternative forms of dwelling to the traditional house type, and wish to continue to live in modern examples of housing: “Just because we are elderly, does not mean we want to live in something that looks like an old people’s home.”

---

Originally published in: Eckhard Feddersen, Insa Lüdtke, Living for the Elderly: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2011.