Design Audit Certificated Buildings

Gold Award winners

Lister House, Lochgelly, Scotland

Lister House in Ballingry, Fife is a forty bed, two storey care home on a site adjacent to an existing nursing home, which has ten residents in each of four units. The interior is particularly bright and well lit due to good use being made of generously proportioned windows. Corridors are wide and as short as possible in a figure of eight layout so that they lead residents from the bedrooms towards the lounges and dining rooms at the central hub of each wing. All bedrooms have en-suite showers and toilets with clearly contrasted seats and grab rails. The sunny garden is safe and secure and provides ample opportunities for participation in a wide range of outdoor activities.

 For further information, contact Adrian Hendry, Director on 01592 862139. 

Perry Tree Centre, Kingstanding, England

This care home and community resource centre makes especially good use of natural light with a bright double height entrance area and the use of extensive glazed internal partitions. The corridors are also comfortably wide enough for ease of movement, accommodating both wheelchair users and the inevitable service trolleys without conflicts.

The internal courtyard provides a well-landscaped safe and enclosed external environment conducive to resident’ being able to participate actively in outdoor pursuits. The en-suite bedrooms, arranged in small-scale groups of eight, provide direct line of sight between the bed positions and the toilets. Floor coverings are used consistently and avoid strong contrasts and bright threshold strips.

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For futher information, or to arrange a visit, please contact Fred Currell, Strategic Commissioner, Birmingham City Council

The Lodge, Buckshaw Retirement Village, Chorley, England

The Lodge at Buckshaw Village in Chorley demonstrates a host of admirable design features for people with dementia. The corridors are spacious with clear handrails and lead to a wide variety of activity spaces including a cinema, pub, bakery/shop and potting room so that every resident’s interests can be well looked after. Toilets are also well distributed throughout the building so that no one has far to travel from any of the communal areas.

Each resident has an apartment with a personalised front door, an en-suite bedroom, a small kitchenette and space for sitting/dining . This arrangement provides a great deal of opportunity for privacy. The enclosed courtyard garden has lots of attractive features to encourage residents to make good use of the safe space and take part in a wide range of outdoor activities including looking after the rabbits.

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Alanmart Day Centre, Stenhousemuir, Scotland

This day centre scored highly because it was genuinely small and domestic in style. The centre comprises a large sitting room discretely subdivided into three  separate groups of comfortable chairs with an open plan adjacent dining room. The toilet doors are highly visible. The large porch provides an alternative activity space and there is a safe enclosed patio garden alongside.

For more information, or to visit, please contact Marion Fivey, Manager on 01324 653 314 or alanmartdaycare@hotmail.com

Beckside Unit, Elmhurst, Ulverston, England

This project involved the adaptation of one 10-bed wing in a single storey 40-bed care home to provide accommodation specifically for residents with dementia.

The conversion work is an excellent example of just how much can be achieved in improving the quality of the environment on a very tight budget.

Features such as personalised bedroom doors, a high standard of lighting and easy access to a well landscaped, safe and secure garden demonstrate that the care home management has grasped the key elements that help residents to achieve the best possible quality of life in a care home environment.

For more information, or to arrange a visit, contact Julie Stevenson, Manager.

The Staveley Centre, Chesterfield, Derbyshire

The Staveley Centre is more than a care home; it provides rooms for services such as advice on technology, a meeting space and a Bistro. It is a wonderfully light, spacious, two storey building around a courtyard with a large garden to the rear. The courtyard is accessible both for visitors to the building and for residents; the two are subtly separated by the covered walkway in the photograph. The garden is easy to access from communal rooms and is full of features to engage different interests such as an allotment area, a washing line and a greenhouse as well as a substantial patio in part roofed by a large balcony for the first floor. The quality of the detail demonstrates the care and attention that has gone into the design of this building, for example: there is a consistent colour to the flooring throughout, the beds can be moved around the bedroom to suit the resident, contrast has been used throughout to ensure that key features are highly visible, the en-suite toilets have simple crosshead taps, there are blinds above the mirrors in communal toilets which can be pulled down to conceal the mirror if necessary .In spite of a rather less than ideal layout, in that the two living groups on each floor are not separated, there are small, domestic dining rooms and plenty of lounges and sitting areas.

Residents have been actively involved in making the communal areas familiar. They have chosen or provided most of the pictures and ornaments as well as choosing to have settees. Considerable efforts have been made to provide themed landmarks to differentiate the specific living areas; and there is plenty of comfortable seating for resting whilst moving around.

Lessons learned on the layout have been remedied in the design of the next Centre being developed at Swadlincote, please contact Andy McEleny, Service Manager, on 01629 533043 or 533040 if you would like more information.