Long may we live!
Community
In most periods throughout history, it was believed that older people could be divided into distinct groups, for whom a particular kind of housing was most suitable. As they got older or their health deteriorated, they would move to a different kind of accommodation. It was customary for an older person to live initially in sheltered housing, then to move to a retirement home when they developed mental or physical disabilities and to spend their final years in a nursing home. This division of older people into categories is based on a perfect analogy between type of person and type of housing.
For a long time it was also the dominant view that older people require care and can no longer make a contribution to society. Only the young, healthy section of the population is productive. It is they who care for older people and decide what is best for them. In the history of housing for older people, this view of old age was only intermittently confronted with more flexible alternatives based on reciprocal relationships between the older and the younger. Illustrative of this vision is the publication The City of the Future, The Future of the City (1946) by A. Bos. This ideological defence of the importance of community attributes an active role to older people within neighbourhoods. The older generation can use their life experience to put conflicts into perspective and can relieve tensions between parents and children. This role presupposes that older people continue to live in the community until an advanced age, albeit in special housing with access to communal facilities and support.
The City of the Future, The Future of the City (1946) A. Bos
The City of the Future, The Future of the City was a plea for marrying individual personal development with an awareness...
➝ Read moreApartments in Pendrecht (1950) Lotte Stam-Beese
In the immediate post-war years, Lotte Stam-Beese designed a block of flats for independent pensioners in Pendrecht, a s...
➝ Read moreIntegral planning of housing for older people is essential! (1963)
Older people as a distinct and specific group were a subject of serious study after the Second World War. In 1963 the ma...
➝ Read moreDe Drie Hoven (1970) H. Hertzberger and C. van Empelen
De Drie Hoven nursing home was designed as a social and cultural intersection in a neighbourhood in Amsterdam-West. This...
➝ Read moreCompetition for homes for the elderly in Loenen aan de Vecht (1976) H.F. Mertens Jr.
In the 1970s homes for the elderly were built not only in inner-city areas but also in small villages. In 1976 a competi...
➝ Read moreHomes for the elderly, Rozenstraat (1974) Aldo van Eyck, Theo Bosch
In the early 1970s a piece of land in the Jordaan neighbourhood of Amsterdam was made available for housing for the elde...
➝ Read moreSint Jacob conversion (2006) De Architecten Cie. / Pi de Bruijn
The Sint Jacob psychiatric hospital on the Plantage Middenlaan in Amsterdam was founded in 1870. Following several renov...
➝ Read morePensioners in the community (1965) Stichting Goed Wonen
Stichting Goed Wonen (the Good Living Foundation), founded in 1946, aimed to improve the quality of homes in the Netherl...
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