22.12.2010
Mornington Centre, Australia
El edificio es una residencia para personas mayores que requieren una evaluación especializada, tratamientos de rehabilitación y cuidados de enfermería. Su organización espacial y su relación con el medio ambiente proponen un cambio respecto del tradicional modelo de atención de los centros médicos. El edificio está diseñado como una gran casa o un hotel costero -no como un hospital- con un nuevo lenguaje desarrollado para describir su programa donde la familia, junto a los cuidadores y el personal médico, atienden las necesidades de los residentes.
This new building provides extended residential accommodation for older people who require specialist evaluation, rehabilitation and nursing care.
The building contests the conventional paradigm of a nursing home. Through its spatial arrangements and normalising environment it shifts from a medico-centric care model to one where family and carers work with staff to deliver care to residents.
The building is designed like a large house or coastal hotel – not like a hospital – with a new language developed to describe its program.
The rooms in which people stay contain bay windows in which people can sit and enjoy the view. These have large openable windows for admitting daylight and fresh air.
Clinical and medical support spaces are hidden to highlight the spaces for clients and their families which form their experience of the building. Timber linings, directional timber vinyl flooring, warm colours and domestic lighting reinforce these readings.
The dining room is the social heart and family focus for the building. Here family members, guests and staff come together to eat, chat and have a cup of tea.
The building is clad in oversized ‘planks’ which are made with bricks embossed with a contoured timber grain digital design.
The building supports a new way of delivering services to older people in our communities – through buildings which have people and families at the centre and drawing evidence based research into these clients’ special needs.