A study on the community model of future aging in Kaifeng, China

Abstract

RESEARCH QUESTION: How to use architectural and planning methods to solve the problem of the elderly living for the aged in the future?

ABSTRACT: At present, China is facing increasing aging population due to the family planning policy promulgated 30 years ago. This project aims to provide a conceptual planning of an elderly-care community to mitigate the stress of elderly support in Kaifeng. The investigation of the elderly care facilities in Kaifeng revealed that the current elderly support model cannot meet the needs of an increasing number of elderly people in the future. A largerscale elderly support plan needs to be proposed to cope with future problems. Therefore, this research focuses on how to use architectures and planning to solve the problem of housing for the elderly in the future.

This planning area of elderly community is named Silver Town and can be regarded as a small city for the elderly. In order to better develop the architectural proposition, first, the development characteristics of nursing homes in China and Western countries in history were compared, and the future nursing home was visualized. In the literature review, the psychological and physical needs of Chinese elderly for nursing homes were studied. Second, during the project design, the Continuing Care Retirement Community model in the US was used for reference, and based on China's national conditions and the psychological and physical characteristics of Chinese elderly, a residential area suitable for the elderly was found, where the elderly can be provided with a familiar and comfortable environment to spend their twilight years. Finally, some architectural precedents were studied, including modern residential areas for the elderly, the layout of residential units and service facilities, and the design of the activity center, hospital, canteen, and food processing plant.

Based on the above analysis, the goal is to design a residential area for the elderly that can accommodate about 20,000 elderly people. Silver Town consists of assisted living apartments, independent living apartments, a hospital, and commercial, entertainment and other supporting facilities. The project will reasonably arrange the distance among these functions according to the willingness of the elderly to walk, so that the elderly can enjoy the same services as those for the young, and their feeling of being abandoned by the society due to physical reasons can be eliminated. In addition, the project explored the extensibility of the retirement city and provided a solution to the future expansion of the scale of elderly care.