Older People’s Housing – the Pandemic and recent Planning Changes

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Older People’s Housing – the Pandemic and recent Planning Changes

Older People’s Housing – the Pandemic and recent Planning Changes

Earlier this year I took over the chair of the Retirement Housing Group; an association of developers, operators, advisory bodies and consultants involved with the wide range of specialist housing for older people. I was assured that chairing this group would not be a hugely demanding task but, with the pandemic raging, that turned out to be not entirely true.

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Stone, Flint and Brick

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Stone, Flint and Brick

Stone, Flint and Brick.

Our church and the Old Palace next door, both beautiful but very different, one built largely of flint and the other in brick, together tell part of a fascinating story about ancient buildings and the materials used in their construction. To us the sight of a flint church seems entirely normal and the finest examples – churches like Long Melford and Southwold – are stunning, but such buildings are rare outside the South-East and East Anglia and almost unknown outside Britain. So what is the story and what are the alternatives?

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Pioneer Intergenerational Co-Housing – The Cockaigne Houses in Hatfield

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Pioneer Intergenerational Co-Housing – The Cockaigne Houses in Hatfield

This viewpoint gives a personal account of the development of a pioneering intergenerational cohousing scheme in Hatfield, built over 50 years ago.

As recognised in the APPG on Housing and Care for Older People inquiry in 2016, it is a forerunner to the HAPPI principles and its attractive single storey design and build quality have stood the test of time. The development was not specifically designed for older people but both the adaptable design and the management are based on cooperative ideals and most of the residents are now of retirement age with 11 of the 28 households being ‘downsizers’. Furthermore, the affection for Cockaigne architecturally and the adaptability of the houses to meet a diverse range of ages, lifestyle choices and disability has also ensured a low turnover in ownership.

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Church architecture – a dual view

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Church architecture – a dual view

My involvement with church architecture began early when, as a choral exhibitioner at Corpus and the only architect in my year there, I was a sitting target to do a lot of the donkey work for the chapel re-ordering which was then under discussion. My main labour was to produce a survey drawing of one bay of the interior, including Blomfield’s dark oak roof. This was taken away by one of the fellows, Malcolm Burgess, who reappeared a few days later with my drawing, coloured in the riot of sky blue, peach and gold which has enlivened the chapel ever since.

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Working as an Architect Expert Witness

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Working as an Architect Expert Witness

Over the last 30 years I have been involved with work as an architect expert witness dealing with land disputes, planning, construction disputes and building defects. I wouldn’t drop my design work and go over to the dark side completely – indeed I consider it very important that an expert should also be an active designer – but a different view of the architectural world with plenty of intellectual cut and thrust brings a welcome touch of variety.

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Co-housing & Cockaigne

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Co-housing & Cockaigne

Cockaigne, for those who don't know, is a mythical land of milk and honey and it was the name chosen back in the early sixties by a newly formed group, full of utopian aspirations, who went on to build the well-known Ryde housing in Hatfield  which has been my home for the last 26 years. With so much current discussion of the merits of co-housing, so much study of successful schemes abroad, and so much frustration suffered by those who try to get schemes off the ground, it is worth looking again at the Cockaigne scheme,  possibly the first UK example, to see what it is that has led to its on-going success.  

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A brief history of housing for older people

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A brief history of housing for older people

In the beginning there were hospitals, early examples being very widely spread in Alexandria, Baghdad, Paris and elsewhere, and these were primarily, as you might expect, places of care for the sick and wounded butin northern Europe during the early middle ages a new and different kind of hospital, a charitable residence for old men, begins to appear. The first known example is St Peter’s hospital in York, founded by King Aethelstan in 936 and the earliest remaining is the St Cross Hospital in Winchester dating from 1133.

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Wonders & Blunders

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Wonders & Blunders

My wonder and blunder are both stations both originally built in the nineteenth century and both recently modernized.
 
Antwerp station, designed in 1895 by Louis Delasencerie, is by no means huge, but is a Beaux-Arts jewel with a magnificently lofty glass domed waiting hall reminiscent of the Paris Opera, from which grand stairs lead up to the original elevated tracks below the single great arch of the train shed. What makes the station so special though is what has been done recently when the decision was taken to add eight new tracks below ground, four of them being new high speed through lines.

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You'll end up in the workhouse... if you're lucky

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You'll end up in the workhouse... if you're lucky

The threat of the “the workhouse” has been a very real and terrifying one for many families over the last four hundred years, but as times change and the desire for renovation has grown, the old workhouse has reinvented itself – with help from imaginative architects.

Richard Morton, of RM Architects, looks at how the workhouse can be transformed from austere and forbidding structures to beautiful and practical homes for an aging population.

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Retirement Housing - Lifestyle not last resort

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Retirement Housing - Lifestyle not last resort

In 2009 HAPPI, the Housing our Ageing Population Panel for Innovation, launched its first report on older people's housing, bringing many new ideas and a very welcome emphasis on design quality to a sector where such things have previously been the exception rather than the rule. In particular the HAPPI report included studies of some excellent schemes in northern Europe which provide a fertile source of new thinking for extra care schemes and care homes in this country.

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Poundbury Revisited

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Poundbury Revisited

Some years ago I designed some houses for the first phase of what was then Prince Charles’s new architectural experiment at Poundbury on the edge of Dorchester. There were about six different architects involved each being allocated a few houses of known shape and size within Leon Krier’s master-plan. Following a design code we all came up with sketches which were then pinned up as street scenes for discussion and criticism. The individual flights of design bravado were then gently brought to earth to avoid an over rich mix dominated by architectural egos. This thinking was later reflected in the arguments put forward by Allies and Morrison stressing that we should value good, ordinary architecture rather than letting ourselves become obsessed with iconic showpieces.

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