Output details

Elderly Housing and Social Centre, Aarschot, Belgium:

36 serviced apartments, a social centre with educational facilities and external landscape for Aarschot OCMW (State funded social housing provider) and the City of Aarschot.

This project develops an innovative typological response to an increasingly critical but largely undeveloped specialist housing type, whilst also developing concerns about the relationship between contemporary architecture and the historic city, which are common to DRDH and their collaborators, AdVVT. Elderly housing is often the generic resultant of a rollout programme, where perceived vulnerability tends towards overly introverted or controlling architecture. With little sense of place, such housing distances its occupants from the world at the time when connections to family and friends are dwindling. This project‘s design intentions are to critique the type and remain responsive to the particularities and opportunities inherent in its setting, within a small-scale market town. Offering opportunities for residents to engage with each other, at a number of scales, whilst also knitting them into the wider community.

The building‘s form responds to its smaller, domestically scaled neighbours within the historic centre of Aarschot. Situated at the confluence of two market streets, it is organised around a new urban square that draws the life of the market into the site. This concern with collective space extends throughout the building. At the smallest scale, apartments are arranged in groups of 3 around a series of intimate communal spaces that open off circulation routes, encouraging neighbourliness and mutual support.

The project was one of six proposals to receive an honourable mention in the New Aging Awards to recognise innovative design in relation to aging populations (University of Pennsylvania, 2010). Published in the UK, the project was presented in a major exhibition on collaborative office AdVVT (de Singel Internationale Kunstcampus, Antwerp, Sept 2011–Jan 2012). Rosbottom, co-director of DRDH, and Jan de Vylder (AdVVT) are jointly responsible for project design, design and coordination of each phase, and development of associated exhibition/presentation material.