Build Architecture Awards

Build Architecture Awards 2015 21 learn from our clients and ultimately through their residents. We experience the various ways that dif- ferent clients understand and implement strategies towards the provision of care and housing to their elderly residents. Fundamental to Campbell Luscombe Architect’s success has been our ability to respond to future market trends within the industry with a clear understanding of the current generation of seniors whose preferences are not necessarily to live in isolated aged communities. Within the residential aged care sector, the current ageing population and their families are demanding a quality of environment and care that offers a sense of community, familiarity, dignity and respect. Their relative affluence will create a demand to be securely integrated into the broader commu- nity in all tiers of seniors housing and care. It is imperative for contemporary aged care architecture to respond to the lifestyle expectations of the new senior’s population, while retaining efficient and practical design and management. The specificity of designing for a particular age group and their needs, coupled with the recognition of and sympathy for cultural memory has always been part of our practice’s thinking. Residential aged care projects can be programmatically com- plex and challenging, with the need to balance the specific healthcare and safety needs of statutory authorities, with the desire to create a less clinical, comfortable “homelike” environment that will be the residence of a very frail aged group in the later stage of their life. There is a tendency in Europe and the UK for more urban senior developments. Australia has previously followed an older American pattern of putting seniors on the fringes of cities or in isolated “sun belt” communities. The majority of devel- opers in Australia now realise the aged market desires a more cosmopolitan trend of ageing within ones established community, maintaining existing social and family connections. To be recognised by ones industry peers is a great honour, we have always found a great reward exploring the possibilities of an architecture that can improve people’s lives, and this is the case when we design for this particular demographic group, with specific cultural, physical and care needs. We utilise a dignified contempo- rary interpretation of the architecture of a period that evokes both a familiarity and substantial cultural recognition. It is pos- sible to make places that can give a sense of grace and dignity to life. Our projects facilitate a positive life affirming narrative that accommodates the lives of the aged residents, their families and the staff.