practical living
is nestled among hundreds of single residential households in an
established suburban setting.
Baptcare Lalor’s integrated living community is not gated,
and the built form blends seamlessly with the surrounding
apartments and townhouses. The precinct is open at its
boundaries, enabling pedestrians to travel through the site,
introducing a further sense of integration and activation with
its surrounds. It’s also in close proximity to the town centre and
a state-of-the-art recreation facility providing residents easy
access to these amenities.
Baptcare’s Lalor facility further contributes a community hub
and wellbeing centre featuring community meeting and activity
rooms, a hairdresser, cafe, day therapy suites and an office
from which local home care services can be administered. This
delivers a win-win situation where Baptcare’s residents can
be closely connected to the vibrancy and convenience of the
existing Mosaic Village amenities, and the village’s residents
benefit from the services and amenities provided by the
community hub and wellbeing centre.
Baptcare’s facility also contributes to housing diversity,
allowing for local families to have their elderly family members
close by and, over time, enabling all residents of Mosaic Village
to age in place.
Another example of how ClarkeHopkinsClarke is integrating
aged care with the community is in Hastings on the Mornington
Peninsula in Victoria, where we have designed a new double-
storey, 120-bed aged-care facility for the Bays Hospital Group.
The project is a redevelopment of the former Hastings Bush
Nursing Hospital, a community-run facility that has provided
healthcare services for nearly a century. The Bays Hospital
Group intends to continue this legacy of community healthcare
with the provision of a day-patient facility for dialysis, as well as
medical consulting suites within the new aged care facility.
The site is adjacent to an existing aged-care residence
and primary school and only a short walk to the town’s main
shopping centre, library, banks, cafes and foreshore parklands.
The master plan seeks to maximise engagement with the
surrounding community while the architecture contributes to
uplifting the local urban character through quality design.
The facility is arranged around a lively main street that provides
access for the local community to the health services within
and connects residents with the wider community both directly
and passively.
This clustering of community amenities further activates the
site in various ways. For instance, a parent might drop their
child off at the primary school located opposite and then visit
their GP in the consulting suites. They can then visit their own
parents in the aged care home and sit out on the second-floor
balcony alongside the grandparents to watch their child playing
at morning recess.
These projects are examples of how ClarkeHopkinsClarke is
delivering on our mission to create vibrant communities. We
believe that aged care facilities introduce much needed housing
and demographic diversity into new and existing communities.
When designed well, they enable older Australians to age within
their local neighbourhood, maintain their social and family
connections, and access the services and amenities they need
without the stigma. ■
James Kelly is an architect and associate at ClarkeHopkinsClarke.
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