Archinect - News

Mæ's John Morden Centre wins the 2023 RIBA Stirling Prize

2023-10-19T19:57:00-04:00

The design for the John Morden Centre in Blackheath, London, by Mæ has just been announced as the winner of the 2023 Stirling Prize by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).

The country’s new ‘Best New Building’ honor was bestowed to the 22-year-old firm’s redesign of the elder care facility located on the site of Grade I-listed Morden College, the original design for which dates to the 1690s and has been attributed to the period’s most significant architect, Sir Christopher Wren.

Photo: Jim Stephenson

The scope of the project involved creating a more sociable, physically active, and less isolating atmosphere in which residents can age in place gracefully. With dramatic effect, the overhaul consolidates formerly diffuse functions at the non-profit care facility into a series of brick pavilions that are connected by the construction of a central timber colonnade.

Photo: Jim Stephenson

A steeply pitched roofline gives the structure an austere but still inviting character. I...

Daniel Libeskind completes senior housing development on Long Island

2023-09-20T17:59:00-04:00

Studio Libeskind has shared photos of its recently completed senior housing project on Long Island.

Located in the village of Freeport in Nassau County, the new Allan and Geraldine Rosenberg Residence holds a total of 45 units reserved for residents aged 55 and older, along with a selection of on-site supportive services and other amenities meant to improve its users' quality of life and ability to age in place as part of the state’s larger $25 billion push to create 100,000 units of affordable housing.

Declaring “Senior housing isn’t just about accommodation; it’s about people. It’s about creating a residence where residents can feel happy, secure, and emotionally connected to their neighbors,” the studio’s founder was joined by New York Governor Kathy Hochul for this week’s ribbon-cutting ceremony. The project reserves a total of 30% of the apartments for disabled and formerly homeless seniors, and sustainability is ensured thanks to rainwater collection, efficient HVAC, and all-e...

New England's first LGBTQ-friendly senior affordable housing development breaks ground in Boston

2022-06-27T14:12:00-04:00

A Boston development that’s billed as New England’s first LGBTQ-friendly senior affordable housing project broke ground Friday. The Pryde will convert the former William Barton Rogers Middle School in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood into 74 units of mixed-income housing for seniors.

The project is being led by developer Pennrose and local nonprofit LGBTQ Senior Housing, Inc. Boston-based architecture firm DiMella Shaffer carried out the facility’s design.

The development will maintain the original 1899 building, which has been vacant since 2015, and its two additions constructed in 1920 and 1934. The design includes multiple spaces for community programming, such as an art room, a classroom, an art gallery, and a multi-purpose room. The project also features a landscaped courtyard, a walking track, and outdoor seating. The exteriors and interiors will be renovated with materials and details in line with the school’s original character.

As noted by LGBTQ Senior Housing, there has always been a need for LGBTQ-friendly housing as seniors of this community are less likely to have children or a family network to support them. Funding for the project includes $3.8 million from the state Department of Housing and Community Development and $4 million from the City of ...

Michael Kimmelman on some newer rays of light in NYC’s public housing stock

2022-02-07T11:59:00-05:00

Writing about Twin Parks in 1973, The Times’s former architecture critic, Paul Goldberger, speculated that the project might “turn out to be important in the history of housing design.” [...] design, however compassionate, can mean only so much against the obstacles that make up the housing problem today.” The calculus is the same half a century later. But the South Bronx isn’t. Gradually, it has been remade. Progress isn’t impossible, it’s a process.

Both observed South Bronx developments, 1490 Southern Boulevard and a transformation of the Lambert Houses, are seen as examples of high-quality and effective public housing that offers residents more than just desultory amenities. The Times critic broke down the new-ish developments by Dattner and Bernheimer Architects by first cautioning us with a history lesson about nearby Twin Parks (which Paul Goldberger predicted might “turn out to be important in the history of housing design” at its opening in 1973), adding that, in his view, the pair offer “templates for redoing” many of NYCHA’s 302 other campuses.

“It’s an 18-story building with 163 permanently affordable units and a doorman. The boxy, drab exterior, set a few steps up and back from the street wall, looks almost belligerently banal. But inside the building is comfortable, luxurious even, compared with the deteriorating apartments and hallways I saw in the old buildings. Crucial to the conversion, no tenants are being dis...

Los Angeles' LGBTQ community gets much-needed senior housing thanks to a new project from the Ariadne Getty Foundation and KFA

2021-10-08T18:50:00-04:00

In an effort to tackle the effects of America’s ongoing affordable housing crisis on LGBTQ seniors, KFA and Leong Leong are teaming up with the Ariadne Getty Foundation on the design of a five-story apartment complex that will help meet the needs of the greater Los Angeles community.

The development will sit adjacent to the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s newly-opened Anita May Rosenstein Campus in Hollywood and will be able to provide 98 studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments to those in dire need of housing. A total of 72 of the apartments will be made available through a lottery system, while the remainder will be set aside for those experiencing chronic homelessness and require assistance through municipal or countywide grant programs.

Image © Jim Simmons/The Ariadne Getty Foundation

“The lack of affordable housing in this country is at an all-time high and presents even greater hardships for the LGBTQ community given the many biases which continue to exist. It’s an even greater probl...

MASS Design Group publishes COVID-19 guide for retrofitting senior housing

2020-08-06T16:07:00-04:00

Mass Design Group has published its latest COVID-19 guide aimed at retrofitting and upgrading existing senior living facilities to minimize pandemic transmission. The Designing Senior Housing for Safe Interaction; The Role of Architecture in Fighting COVID-19 guide follows a strategy document published by the group earlier this year focused on adapting existing hospital spaces to better deal with a surge of patients suffering from airborne disease.

Mass Design Group's latest guide highlights the high level of infections and deaths that have taken place within these facilities and offers a bevy of approaches for minimizing the ways in which residents are exposed to the disease.

Previously on Archinect: "MASS Design Group brings pandemic design expertise to American hospital wards." A diagram showing interventions that the Mount Sinai Hospital implemented to turn this adult ICU wing into one that could treat patients who have tested positive for coronavirus. Image courtesy MASS Desig...

AIA publishes building adaptation recommendations for senior living facilities

2020-06-30T12:58:00-04:00

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has unveiled its latest set of design adaptation strategies aimed at retrofitting existing buildings for post-pandemic use.

The latest guide, following up on strategies for schools, commercial facilities, and other spaces, is geared specifically for senior living facilities. A recent article in The New York Times explains that upwards of 43% of COVID-19 deaths in the United States are linked to nursing homes and that these casualties make up the majority of COVID-19 deaths in at least 24 states.

Previously on Archinect: AIA publishes re-occupancy strategies for schools, including 3D models Image courtesy of VMDO Architects.

These troubling statistics inform the urgency of the AIA's latest guidelines, which are geared toward the now-stalled "re-opening" phase of the pandemic while keeping an eye on a possible second or third wave of infections that could materialize in the fall during the traditional flu season. AIA's report states, "public...

Boomers poised to leave suburban Dust Belts in their wake

2019-11-25T22:00:00-05:00

The U.S. is at the beginning of a tidal wave of homes hitting the market on the scale of the housing bubble in the mid-2000s. This time it won’t be driven by overbuilding, easy credit or irrational exuberance, but by an inevitable fact of life: the passing of the baby boomer generation.

A report in The Wall Street Journal highlights the coming vacancy crisis set to impact America's retirement communities and exurbs as members of the Baby Boomer generation age out of independent living with fewer members of younger generations left—or willing—to take their places.

The report states, "One in eight owner-occupied homes in the U.S., or roughly nine million residences, are set to hit the market from 2017 through 2027 as the baby boomers start to die in larger numbers, according to an analysis by Issi Romem conducted while he was a senior director of housing and urban economics at Zillow. That is up from roughly 7 million homes in the prior decade."

It gets worse: According to The Wall Street Journal, up to 21 million homes could be vacated by seniors by 2027, more than twice the number of new properties built during the decade that preceded the Great Recession.

Housing as a prescription for homelessness

2019-11-12T18:59:00-05:00

By early next year [UnitedHealth Group] expects to house 350 homeless Medicaid patients whose annual health-care spending, while they’re on the streets, exceeds $17 million. The goal is for them to “graduate” within a year to paying their own rent.

Bloomberg Businessweek profiles UnitedHealth Group's efforts to reign in healthcare costs by providing high-cost patients with housing. The approach comes as the connections between a lack of housing and extreme healthcare costs come into sharper relief between these adjacent industries.

The health company recently partnered with Phoenix-based non-profit group Chicanos Por La Causa to purchase and upgrade 500 housing units that rent for as little as $609 per month, according to Bloomberg Business. The group's holdings include The Residences at Camel Back West, a mixed-income housing complex that offers market-rate and below-market rate housing options.

UnitedHealth's efforts mirror those of Denver Health Medical Center and the Denver Housing Authority, two entities that have partnered to refurbish a defunct hospital structure into 15 senior housing apartments in a similar bid to bring housing and healthcare to needy populations.