New Tricks

Brydie Shephard

My Grandfather always hated the idea of a retirement home. A horticulturalist and self-confessed handy-man, his days were spent in his garden: pruning roses; chopping wood; expanding his aviary. His life was one of open spaces and independent living, of Saturday tennis lessons and Sunday roasts.

And yet, as the years passed, the house grew impossibly large and increasingly empty. Staircases, cavernous baths and split-level living morphed from selling points to hindrances, obstacles that made his home an inherently challenging place to live. Despite this, he resisted moving into aged care. He was in good health – blessed with mobility, agility and quick wit – and in the battle of independence and risk versus safety and regulation, he was willing to hedge his bets.

With a population that is both older and healthier than ever before, my Grandfather’s experience is not a particularly unique one. He is just one of a growing number of people who face a residential purgatory where neither existing residences nor aged care provides an adequate solution to their needs.

Enter the Buxton Group, whose latest project The Granton, provides a re-education in how architecture can consider paradigms of aging and independent living. Spacious, seamless and sophisticated, this boutique development is designed specially for seniors, providing housing options where residents are not necessarily assisted, but empowered.

Located in the coastal Melbourne suburb of Brighton, The Granton is a collection of just 35 apartments, with 1, 2 and 3 bedroom variations available for purchase. Created to cater for a demographic of active and able seniors, the development offers logical, practical and beautiful solutions for its specific clientele, with Demaine Partnership (Architects), Carr (Interiors) and Tract

Render by Mr P Studios

Consultants (Landscape Architects) ensuring each element of the project considers the lifestyle and residential requirements of future residents.

The Granton is an architectural re-education: a shifting of pedagogies of aged-care and senior living. Age has been so carefully embedded in this project that it appears effortless, where high-end, sumptuous apartments “just happen” to have kitchens wide enough for wheelchair access and drawers and private gardens that can be accessed even once mobility deteriorates.

More than just a question of spatiality, The Granton teaches the importance of intelligent product and fixture selection; where apartment finishes play a vital role in facilitating independent living. Here, oversized and frameless showers account for maneuvering walking aids, mixers allow for water accessibility and other seamless details ensure an ease of use, whatever the need may be.

So too, appliance selection speaks to the continuation of a lifestyle without compromise. In the kitchen, Zip HydroTaps ensure residents have access to instant filtered boiling, chilled and sparkling water, minimising the need for superfluous containers, gadgets and kitchen accessories. Speaking to an ethos of simplicity and sustainability, the Zip HydroTap complements the project’s wider ethos: the intersection between luxury and pragmatism made manifest.

The Granton is retirement-lite, where architecture treats age with grace and wisdom. It is not defined by its residents, but is rather informed by them, actively arranging and manipulating space, products and design to allow them to live with their homes rather than in spite of them. This is architecture we need more of, a new way of thinking that provides tangible answers to the questions seniors are asking.