The Street – a grey area
Project type: Research Proposal
Commissioned by: Dutch Architecture Fund
Location: Almere, the Netherlands
Date: 2013
Currently we have created a system of Care for the Elderly in the Netherlands where we are moving at the moment when we are no longer able to continue living at home with or without medical assistance. Older people move from their own home to a place where you will be taken care of. Due to that relocation, their welfare significantly and permanently deteriorates.
Today, this system goes, however, no any more without saying. Space and care would have to adapt to our personal needs rather that we have to adapt to a system. In the discussion about the changing situation in the care we mostly talk about the declining flows of budget, rising health care prices and that healthcare providers have to think about scaling up. Although a change of the system might just create room for customization and self-organization. After all, the clients are themselves increasingly customers on an individual base. This research proposal aims to investigate this paradox from the spatial model of ‘The Street’ as a study of a multidisciplinary team and with the hypothesis, that moving to a separate care facility might not be not required because all facilities needed phase in into your house and into your street.
With the proposed research ‘The Street’, we want to examine the system integrally within the four dimensions of financial, environmental, social and technical care conditions and potentials. This will be practical in the form of interviews, workshops and site visits. The research aims to provide information on how to actually get as close as possible to a growing model that is a personal solution feasible in practice.