Embracing shifting demographics

We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and recognize their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.

In March this year, the Final Report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety called for fundamental reform of the aged care system. As architect Jan Golembiewski highlighted in his article for The Conversation (9 April 2021), the report unfortunately didn’t address the role that architecture can play in the implementation of the recommendations. He says that “only two of the 148 recommendations relate specifically to architecture, numbers 45 and 46: to improve the design of residential care accommodation; and to provide ‘small household’ models of accommodation.”

Prompted by this omission, we invited Guy Luscombe, Sydney director of System Architects, to guest-edit a dossier for this issue of Architecture Australia on how we might envision a more age- and dementia-friendly built environment (page 51). During the past 20 years, Guy has authored and edited books on how design can improve living conditions for an ageing population and, back in 2014, he was awarded the Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship to study innovative age-friendly buildings in Europe. In Guy’s dossier, entitled “Living longer, designing differently,” Damian Madigan demonstrates how residents of “bluefield” suburbs might age in place rather than being pushed out by gentrification; Rosemary Kennedy and Laurie Buys discuss ideas from the 2020 Longevity by Design Challenge at The University of Queensland; Safiah Moore, Greyson Clark and Georgia Vitale consider a series of experimental agefriendly city case studies; Yim Eng Ng explores the architectural considerations for Indigenous aged care; and a roundtable discussion looks at how we might design for dementia, the second leading cause of death in Australia. In this future-focused dossier, it’s not about “us” and “them” – it’s about how we can create a “richer, more inclusive living environment for us all.”

Inclusivity is also at the heart of a pair of government-led housing developments reviewed in this issue. Goulburn Street Housing by Cumulus Studio (page 80) is a response to housing affordability and availability in Hobart and has been designed to accommodate a “diversity of users, with accessibility and a balance between privacy and community central to the architectural strategy.” A not-for-profit tenancy management company is currently managing the property to house at-risk Tasmanians over the age of 50. Similarly, Anne Street Garden Villas on the Gold Coast by Anna O’Gorman Architect (page 72) is a government-led demonstration project, developed to inform proposed guidelines aimed at improving the quality of future social housing in Queensland. These homes are designed with inherent flexibility to accommodate “shifting demographics in social housing and changing patterns of living and working within the home.” We will continue to celebrate and promote outstanding exemplars of social housing in Architecture Australia, with an issue focusing on design that is accessible for everyone planned for early in 2022.

We conclude this edition with a celebration of the Australian Institute of Architects’ Chapter Awards (page 87) in the lead-up to the National Architecture Awards to be covered in our November/ December issue. This year, I had the pleasure of joining one of the Victorian Chapter juries and, after enduring the displacement of industry camaraderie throughout the continuing COVID-era, I was acutely aware of the importance of reconnecting with our community and the value of peer recognition within and beyond the profession itself. Congratulations to all those project teams recognized this year.