age in place
Commissioned by an elderly couple, this project involved providing planning guidance, building code advice, and construction drawings to support a proposed division of their home, so they could age in place.
Residential Project
& Self initiated research
Location:
Wadawurrung Land – Point Lonsdale, VIC
Date:
2019, 2021
Role: architect
building and planning code review and recommendations, schematic design, design development, research
To “Age in place” means to live in a familiar community and home, or a similar homelike environment, as you get older, rather than moving to a residential care facility. There is strong evidence that aging in place results in better mental and physical health outcomes.1
Over the coming decades, our societal ability to adequately resource the accomodation of aging people, will become a pressure point, and potentially result in inequities in our cities. Growing evidence that aging in community results in better mental and physical health outcomes, creates opportunities and impetus for the design of flexible and accessible housing.2
This project raised questions in my own practice about how houses can be designed or renovated with the future in mind, this project was easier to action because there were two bedrooms at either end of the house. Increasing density by subdividing existing housing stock provides many benefits including easing the issue of insufficient housing stock and the needs of a growing elderly population to live in homes that can grow or shrink based on the needs of their occupants.
The regions, particularly on the coasts, are becoming increasingly older.
This project was in Point Lonsdale which has significantly older, larger houses, with less people in them than the national average.
How much house is enough?
** nb references are for applicable guides in 2019
This proposal looked at dividing this house into two units. At a time when there are a record number of unused bedrooms in the country, solutions like this provide opportunities to positively impact housing affordability, and create more of a sense of community in our sprawling suburbs by increasing density.
Design team:
Kholisile Dhliwayo, Lungile Makore
References
1 – Prosper, Vera. “Aging in Place in Multifamily Housing.” Cityscape 7, no. 1 (2004): 81–106.
2 – Blanchard, Janice. “Aging in Community: The Communitarian Alternative to Aging in Place, Alone.” Generations: Journal of the American Society on Aging 37, no. 4 (2013): 6–13.
This project took place on the unceded land of the Wadawurrung people of the Kulin Nation .