(BDT_11_054) “Haus am Steinnocken” Home for the Elderly

Description

In 1999, the German Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ) initiated a pilot project entitled “The Cost-Effective Building of High-Quality Care Facilities for the Elderly” which aims at the implementation of new developments in housing and care provision through forward-looking architectural design. The pilot project was initiated in the form of a competition in four locations. The winning design by Enno Schneider Architekten for the “Haus am Steinnocken” home for the elderly adopts a two-pronged approach in which the highly functional areas for nursing care are housed in a new building and the living areas with less intensive care requirements in an existing building from 1964. The result – built while the home was in operation – is a synthesis of sophisticated new architecture and the sensitive modernisation of an existing building. Careful attention was given to reducing the volume of the building by embedding it in the slope of the site.

Divided into three sections, the horizontal layering of the new building responds to the topography of the site. It consists of a three-storey volume alongside the road which cantilevers outwards on diagonal columns over the plinth level below, which in turn runs the length of the front of the existing building. The two-storey plinth with two care areas connects the old and new buildings via a glazed walkway, while the glazed treatment of the ground floor emphasises its more public function as a social gathering point with entrance area, cafeteria and terrace. The two upper storeys, each containing two care areas, are treated as an independent, apparently free-floating volume. The new extension picks up the floor levels of the existing building and connects with it via bridges on each floor.

The central atrium with glazed ceiling and open staircase provides not only vertical circulation and greater orientation but also allows natural light to flood into the building. The hall also serves as a distributor for fresh air drawn in from the garden, which then passes along the corridors and into the rooms and their individual bathrooms. The serial repetition of the rooms allows a high degree of prefabrication and the building shell is consequently made of precast concrete elements clad with fibre-cement panelling.

The strict arrangement of the floor plan of the extension differentiates between two kinds of care areas: “neighbourhoods” and “communities”. The 16.3 m²-large single rooms on the south side are accordingly grouped around a common living and dining area, while those on the north side are arranged around the stairwell atrium. Here too there is a communal living and dining room so that these areas can also be used as “communities” if required.

The nursing home provides a total of six living areas with individually adaptable care concepts, with people with dementia forming the primary care group. The design of the living and kitchen areas aims, therefore, to create the sense of a joint household and they have been made as comfortable and homely as possible.

The rooms for residents who are in constant need of nursing care are located in the plinth. The rooms have wide doors and face outwards over the green landscape, as do the common areas which are augmented via a sheltered interior courtyard.

The architectural character of the existing building has been largely retained and converted to comply with barrier-free DIN norms, without needing to make major changes to the structure of the building. The plinth and ground level accommodate the service centre, administration, staff rooms and utility areas as well as six short-stay care beds. On the upper floors, the former single and twin rooms have been combined to form 18 barrier-free 45.3 m² -large serviced apartments with completely redesigned bathrooms and a 5.1 m²-large loggia. While the care and administration areas can be accessed from the new entrance in the new building, the tenants in the serviced apartments are free to use the barrier-free entrance in the existing building.

The entire complex and the planning of its outdoor areas relates to the landscape. The orchard at the lower end of the site has been revived and replanted and a dry-stone wall now marks the boundary of the site to the south.