From standardized care facilities to living for seniors with care needs

25 years of building healthcare

25 years ago was the time when the retirement homes (then the name for residential care complexes) and nursing homes of the 1960s and 1970s were renovated or demolished. These care buildings had been planned from the top down and in detail by the government. All plans had to pass the Building Board, which determined whether they met the set standards. The uniformity of all the buildings indicates that the Building Board saw the elderly then as two homogeneous groups. The first group could still get by quite well and retirement homes were built for that purpose. The second group needed 24-hour care and ended up in nursing homes.

Retirement home 

A fine example of an old people's home can be found in Rotterdam. Here, 25 years ago, an old people's home built in 1974 was renovated. The 259 residents of Hoppesteyn reached one of the twelve residential floors via the elevator. Once out of the elevator, they found themselves in a long anonymous corridor with a battery of doors to the left and right. Only at the very end of the corridor did a glimpse of daylight appear. Behind all the doors, residents had exactly 23.7 m2 at their disposal: a hallway with a 90-cm sink, a toilet with a sink where not only the hands but also the body had to be washed, and a living/bedroom 5 m deep and 3.4 m wide. Residents who wanted to look out at the street in their chairs by the window looked onto a 1.5 m concrete gallery. The living space, as well as visual contact with the outside world, was very limited.

The way care institutions were organized at that time was similar to other government institutions such as schools and prisons. The elderly were at the mercy of the daily routine of the institution's staff, and the use of the rooms met the requirements of the staff more than those of the residents. 

Away from imposed standards

In the renovation plan for Hoppesteyn, both residents and staff were consulted. Both were able to exercise concrete criticism of a model apartment realized in advance. Successfully, the client deviated from the imposed standards, giving residents a living, bedroom and bathroom. The glass-washing gallery was removed so that the residents could look out onto the street and the on the other side onto Boezemsingel. On the second floor came a child care center with a playground on the roof of the meeting room and restaurant. This brought the children and the elderly together. In 2000, a 26-story tower was added to Hoppesteyn, with a passageway for care on each floor.

Nursing home

Things were not much better with the former nursing homes. People who needed 24-hour care ended up in nursing homes, which were similar to a hospital but without expensive equipment and surgeons. Four or two beds in a room and a curtain drawn around the bed to create visual privacy was common. The very last thing people with dementia saw in those days must have been the system ceiling. 

A good example was nursing home Birkhoven in Amersfoort, which was demolished in 2006 and made way for a new building with studios with private bathrooms. A park was also created between the new buildings with attractive spots and a grand café with a terrace. In 2009, the Building Board was abolished and the care organizations became responsible for their housing and that was a good decision. Because the elderly cannot be divided into two homogeneous target groups. After the abolition, a huge variety of buildings emerged. The times of elderly and nursing homes are fortunately definite behind us.