SP* Vision Aged Living// An aged care proposal

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Vision Aged Living

An Interiors student project proposal to aged care in Australia

Designer: Marlene Morales

This project was inspired by my own habitus and passions. In my experience I have seen the benefits of communicating with people from all ages. There is so much wisdom and personal stories that you get to hear from someone who is older than you, there is something precious about hearing somebody else’s crazy or lovely stories, they are stories from another time and place that maybe unknown to you, stories that keep on living on through you. Yes some elderly people are bitter and some calm and joyful, but that’s what makes people unique and human. It honestly breaks my heart to hear stories on the news about elderly abuse and loneliness, let alone seeing family members and people in general disrespect these people. I hope to learn more about Aged care and how it works and to hopefully come up with a different perspective in how it can run.

Assessment//

The stresses that are imposed onto the elderly can be caused by many things, one being housing situation, second being health related and thirdly elder abuse. The afflictions of those who are in residential living would most likely be loneliness And those who have Home care assistance might be dealing with elderly abuse, same goes with residential and nursing homes. Elderly abuse can be neglect, physical, sexual and emotional, and for those who are dealing with loneliness might be under the elder abuse category or be struggling to pay for recreational activities or just everyday transport expenses , these problems are interconnected. “75% of the residents in residential care facilities do not receive regular visits by relatives, are visited infrequently at all. “ Among known perpetrators of abuse and neglect is a family member in 90% of the cases. It can be safe to say from this logistics that Australia hasn’t developed a culture of respecting and heralding the elderly, just the idea of respect doesn’t seem to entirely exist. On the bright side we have an opportunity to form a culture that respects, honours, applauds and protects its elderly.

The proposal//

This document proposal aims to put forward a new concept alongside an already developed aged care system and focuses on providing a solution to elder abuse and our ever-increasing problem of loneliness within our elderly citizen community, at the very least provide prevention measures with interconnected human centred design. Vision Aged Living proposes a new housing typology, multi-generational living. This project will provide existing projects as a case study to demonstrate the effectiveness of multi-generational living, and provide conceptual spaces, this booklet will serves as a starting guideline for future projects

The conceptual spaces found within this booklet serve as a key and goal as to how the project could look like in its’ full-size glory, which in this example is the German building template Koch, Obergeschoss, in reality, Vision Aged Living’s first project will be to re-purpose a building if possible, rather than construct, but if necessary, then that option will be pursued. A smaller average sized building will aim to target elderly citizens who are in the basic to low care needs in other words, still capable in living independently and who want to still live independently. This building will be designed in a way that puts our model into action and will refer these design guidelines in the booklet. These residents both young and old will reap the benefits and work through the challenges of multi-generational living.

When the opportunity presents itself, Vision Aged Living will look into designing a larger scaled project like Koch, Obergeschoss in hopes to fully fulfil Vision Aged Living’s model and provide exemplary standards of living through multi-generational living. The larger the scale the more we are able to consider and fit, from apartment living/ cluster living to embedding our own aged care facility, a nursing home. One of the early steps in Vision Aged Living’s future is to become an aged care provider specifically for the residents within our projects, this then becomes community focused.

This booklet has earnestly sought out ways to combat some of the troubles our elderly citizens face and provide an alternative method, enjoy the read.