The library and the ageing // the ageing and the library, two mirror studio s.

Transcription

1 DESIGN STUDIO 10/11 SEM 01 Version 07 September 2010 WAALSE KROOK The library and the ageing // the ageing and the library, two mirror studio s. foto: ABSCIS architecten 1. Situation of the general theme(s) 1.1. Over all theme: social sustainability and user-orientation: 1.2. Colouring the definitions, Brundtland 1987 Sustainability is the key theme of the English Master of Architecture at Sint-Lucas School of Architecture. This program uses the Brundtland Commission s definition of sustainability. See: The Brundtland Report, Our Commun Future, 1987 identifies three main pillars of sustainability: the social, environmental and economical Social Social Sustainability' is examined. Hereunder, the concept of Universal Design' is introduced as a humancentered

2 design paradigm. The concept emphasizes the role of the end-user in the process of designing: visitor, commuter, inhabitant, citizen, worker, dweller, tourist... User-orientation is quantified in the degree to which actual or virtual users of the built environment are represented in the research layout of the project, or figure as co-designers or touchstone in the design process and evaluation. The research by design centres round presentday key issues and real world problems such as ageing, handicap and acculturation. Source: Environmental Environmental Sustainability' critically assesses the concepts of the sustainable city and the eco-city, ecological aspects on macro and micro level, water-management, energy-efficiency and energy-saving technology, zero footprint, environmental management systems... Deals also with Ecopolis, being in process, materials, lighting, Economical Economical Sustainability' gives a focus on aspects of e.g. structural and resource efficiency, flexibility, assessment of the physical and functional lifespan of the building, building rationality, waste management strategies and waste prevention, recycling construction, adapted architectural reuse, reuse of salvaged materials,... Deals also with rationalisation, structure, efficiency Source: People Planet Profit In practical terms, triple bottom line accounting means expanding the traditional reporting framework to take into account ecological and social performance in addition to financial performance. The phrase was coined by John Elkington in It was later expanded and articulated in his 1998 book Cannibals with Forks: the Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business. Sustainability, itself, was first defined by the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations in The concept of TBL demands that a company's responsibility be to stakeholders rather than shareholders. In this case, "stakeholders" refers to anyone who is influenced, either directly or indirectly, by the actions of the firm. According to the stakeholder theory, the business entity should be used as a vehicle for coordinating stakeholder interests, instead of maximizing shareholder (owner) profit. (wikipedia) for future generations to come Innovation competition City of Gent From competition rules: Doel en omschrijving van de wedstrijd Met de wedstrijd willen we studenten van het Hoger Onderwijs stimuleren een innoverend product of toepassing te ontwikkelen die kadert binnen integrale toegankelijkheid. Eveneens willen we ze aanzetten om de basisprincipes van Design for All/Ontwerp voor Iedereen te integreren in hun ontwerpen en hun denken. Het is de bedoeling om voor de nieuw te bouwen stadsbibliotheek, als onderdeel van de site Waalse Krook, de studenten te laten werken in drie vakdomeinen: namelijk architectuur en binnenhuisarchitectuur, webdesign en productontwikkeling en tot slot grafisch design en ingenieurswetenschappen.

3 Design for All/Ontwerp voor Iedereen betekent dat van bij de aanvang van het besluiten vormingsproces de volgende vraag voorop moet staan: Hoe kan een product, een grafische boodschap, een gebouw of een publieke ruimte zowel esthetisch als functioneel zijn voor een zo groot mogelijke groep gebruikers? 1.5. D.M.S.C. a workshop in collaboration with the city of Gent Designing the Multi-Sensorial City: multi-sensorial workshop reconnecting designers with (impaired) end-users. Ignorance and insecurity among architects, urban planners and interior designers, are but a few factors that prevent designers of paying attention to multi-sensorial means of experiencing the built environment. Tactility (texture of a ramp, walls, railings, air stream, heat radiation...), sound (of traffic, rattle sounds, voices, birds, wind, announcements, noise of pathways, echoes...), smell (of traffic, garbage, interiors, perfumes, food, plants...): what of these senses can designers explore and adopt in view of enriching the multi-sensorial qualities and potentials of the built environment? The workshop will run for ten days in collaboration with the city of Gent. Site and program: Looking into the refurbishment of the administrative complex of the city of Gent and the province Oost-Vlaanderen from a multi-sensorial perspective. The site consists of the existing buildings and square of Gent ZUID The Ageing Population (Elderly Care) To ensure that elderly people can live independent lives, using their own resources, the challenges ahead are to remove the societal barriers hindering independent living, to develop a greater variety of housing options and to ensure access to services. The housing and care policy for the elderly depends on the view of old age and the chosen model of ageing. Bente Lindstrøm Life in the new millennium poses several challenges that must be dealt with effectively and efficiently. Increasing elderly populations, lower wages and social security payments, a high cost of living and more people working from home have caused a host of social ailments ranging from malnourished elderly, homelessness and poor worker performance. If not proactive, we will most likely be reactive. David Kopec 1.7. OIKODOMOS continued OIKODOMOS: a virtual campus to promote the study of dwelling in contemporary Europe OIKODOMOS is a research project financed by the Lifelong Learning programme ( ) carried out by higher education institutions and research centers from Belgium, France, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The goal of the project is to create a virtual campus to promote the study of dwelling at a European scale. The aim of OIKODOMOS, a Greek word for "to build, to construct a house", is to set an innovative learning structure in motion, incorporating on-line and on-site activities (blended learning). This virtual campus is going to develop new methods to study housing in a multidisciplinary way, interweaving different courses and seminars, digital repositories and on-line learning environments, cases analysis and project workshops taking place at the participating institutions. Community representatives and local authorities in the participating countries are expected to participate in the project's activities.

4 2. Approach and design assignment 2.1. General Taking the context and culture of the above mentioned themes, you will design a hybrid building, containing dwellings for the elderly and a library. We will merge the two design studios and integrate them both. The two studios will work (simultaneously) on the same site, the same topics/themes and the same parts of the program but in different proportions. One part of the studio will design a hybrid containing mainly dwelling for elderly and in a lesser part a library, the other part of the design studio will do the inverse: designing an hybrid concentrating on the library with a minor part of dwelling for the elderly. Students will work in groups of maximum 3 students. At different moments both approaches/models will meet for comparison, debate, clash and inspiration. At the end of the semester (14 weeks) we will try to formulate some conclusions or generate new architectural knowledge emerging from the differences in program/approach The Site: The site is the WAALSE KROOK in Gent. This is the site for an architectural competition for the new library for the city of Gent. foto: ABSCIS architecten 2.3. Task: You will have to develop a contemporary theory/philosophy on Alternative Formats for Collective Living and express this theory architecturally. The theory s focus is on dwellng for the elderly. The design will take into account the individual dwelling as well as the whole cluster. The aspect of the collective and the intermediate

5 space (the private common) will be an important feature of your conceptual theory as will be the link with the public realm and the library. Since the feeling of exclusion is one of the major topics for elderly, you will look for a hybrid project merging, colliding, melting, superposing, etc dwellings for the elderly and a 21 st century library. But as mentioned before, half of the studio will work on a model where the emphasis is on dwelling and the other half of the studio will work on a model where the emphasis is on the library. 3. Resources: 3.1. Scaling up and down simultaneously (article) New rest home projects in Europe have to address two opposing evolutions in society. On the one hand, increasing pressure on social insurance budgets demands greater cost effectiveness. On the other, rest homes have to meet the growing demand for social functions. Solutions to this paradox can be found in the creativity of architects. Architects can make the difference Do we really want to spend the last phase of our lives in a hospital-like building, conceived only for functionality? Or would we prefer a more familiar environment that radiates hominess and pleasure? Care is increasingly becoming an architectural challenge. The conventional home for the elderly has served its turn and is being replaced by more modern arrangements combining both living and care functions. In this type of environment, people preserve their independence as much as possible and apply for the enabled care services when needed. Architects need no longer restrict their plans to functionality, efficiency, and economic profit. They must integrate social aspects as well. Residents, not patients The increasing emphasis on social aspects in health care is a major challenge. People want to spend their old age in a cosy, homelike place, not someplace where they are treated like bothersome patients. Likewise, carers are also becoming convinced that elderly people suffering from dementia need attention rather than just supervision. They agree that forcing them into tightly disciplined isolation is no longer appropriate. Abandoning the concept of isolation has consequences on the building's design. Anonymous entrance halls, blind passages, and the lack of transition zones between collective and private spaces are not designs that help people to feel at home. The elderly want their rest home to radiate hominess and be recognizable as a personal residence. Of course, people exhibiting dementia often feel like they are confined in a hospital and this can be attributed primarily to budget reasons. As an example, the Dutch government funds 170 per day for a dementia patient, as compared to 190 for prisoners and 500 for detainees in a hospital ward. Take the outside world inside Rest homes will have to find a solution that combines an emphasis on social functions with increased cost-effectiveness for the care provided. In the Netherlands, some newly built rest homes obtain good results with the concept of clustered units. They bring together 150 or 200 people, but at the same time mimic the different levels of the outside life in one social complex. Six or seven people live, together with their carers, in a normal, recognizable dwelling. Medical facilities and functions are hidden or incorporated in the furniture. All inhabitants have their own room, and their own address. The dwellings are grouped ten or less to a block. An important architectural design philosophy underlying this approach is to provide a contrast between the private and the public space. The corridors look like a street complete with front doors, doorbells, and post boxes. In their turn, several of those blocks are grouped on one site, with a central building that accommodates support functions like doctor's practices, a drugstore, and physiotherapists. The whole site is secure, safe, and accessible and provides social services that are well-tailored to the needs of the occupants.

6 Smart design Flexibility and forecasting are two other challenges for architects. The needs in social services evolve very rapidly, but buildings are long-term investments. In order to keep the useful life of a rest home high, the functional life-span should never lag behind its technical and economic life-span. This is a situation where prefabricated, easily dismantled or altered buildings hold great promise. These provide high flexibility not only in the design and construction, but also in the interior and exterior appearance of the building. They allow an easy shift in the use of a building. A building originally meant for care, for example, is easily converted into a residential unit, without excessive rebuilding costs. Architects hold an important key in meeting the needs of a challenging era. Source: de Architect. October Several articles. Den Haag, Sdu Uitgevers. Diedert Debusscher 3.2. WAALSE KROOK, City of Gent Innovation competition Gent Zorgende Architectuur / Architecturale Zorg Peter Swinnen Vlaamse Bouwmeester, Architect 51N4E Woensdag 13 oktober, u u. Brussels Expo De zorgsector is bij uitstek geschikt om de stad van de toekomst mee te helpen vorm te geven. In het verleden stond zorginfrastructuur al te vaak synoniem voor een architectuur die niet echt in het stedelijk weefsel paste, laat staan het stedelijk weefsel mee vorm gaf. In deze uiteenzetting wordt er aan de hand van concrete voorbeelden getoond wat de toekomst van de zorgsector kan zijn, van de schaal van een kamer tot de schaal van een buurt. De stad van morgen zal een zorgende stad zijn of niet Oikodomos Designing in the Dark Silverplan City of Mechelen In het voorjaar van 2010 kregen alle Mechelaars ouder dan 60 jaar, een brief in de bus. Het was een uitnodiging van de stad Mechelen om deel te nemen aan gesprekken ter voorbereiding van een nieuw ouderenbeleidsplan. Maar liefst 108 ouderen reageerden op deze oproep.

7 Verschillende groepjes spraken over verschillende thema's De grote groep ouderen werd onderverdeeld per thema. Zij spraken over de volgende thema's in hun stad: Wonen, Diversiteit in de samenleving, Inspraak en participatie, Vrije tijd en cultuurbeleving, Veiligheid, mobiliteit en toegankelijkheid, Zorg en dienstverlening Oplossingen zoeken voor de problemen Samen benoemden ze hun bekommernissen en zochten ze naar oplossingen. Voor een probleem bestaat meer dan één oplossing. De stad wilde graag weten hoe zij vanuit het beleid kan bijdragen met gerichte oplossingen. De ouderen dachten hier mee over na, tenslotte zijn zij de ervaringsdeskundigen! Een nieuw beleidsplan Het resultaat wordt in een nieuw beleidsplan gegoten. Dit plan is nog in ontwikkeling. Zodra het af is, kom je het hier te weten Other links: