Long may we live!
The service flat
One example of collective housing for the elderly is the service flat. These are apartments in private residential buildings in which the residents pay for the communal facilities themselves and the rent and care are priced at market level. The first luxury complexes were built in the 1920s and 1930s with comforts such as lifts, central heating, intercom, a restaurant, large apartments and guest rooms.
Initially the residents were modern city dwellers who were sufficiently progressive to live in such apartments. From the 1970s service flats were much more common because of the increasing numbers of wealthier pensioners. Today the market mostly builds independent apartments for pensioners, who buy in care and help individually or sometimes communally. Much of the housing is luxurious, ergonomically designed and located in inner-city neighbourhoods or rural areas with a wealth of recreational facilities.
Gerhardhuis (1959) W. van Tijen
The A. H. Gerhardhuis in Amsterdam is named after the freethinker and humanist A. H. Gerhard. This retirement home is ba...
➝ Read moreThe Frigate service flats (1980) Anton Alberts
The Frigate service flats in the De Leyens neighbourhood of Zoetermeer were designed by Anton Alberts in the late 1970s....
➝ Read moreService flats on Jozef Israëlsplein (1925-1926) Jan Wils, F.L.J. Lourijsen
The service flat for pensioners, a building with communal amenities paid for by the residents, has its origins in the so...
➝ Read moreApollohuis (1938) W.M. Dudok
In 1930 the Amsterdam Cooperative Housing Association commissioned the architect Willem Marinus Dudok (1930) to design a...
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