young designers

Flexible

home wins retirement design prize

Earlier this year, students were invited to submit entries for the first Peverel Retirement Design Competition, ‘Future Ageing’

Above: the winning designs; left: Peverel Retirement competition judges with the winning designers

STUDENTS from aroUND the* country were recently asked to come up with their ideas for an independent living retirement development in a national competition launched by Peverel Retirement in conjunction with the Interior Educators, who are a group of lecturers teaching interior design and architecture at universities across the UK. Students were asked to consider space, security, sustainability and social living in their entries.

Keith Edgar, Managing Director of Peverel Retirement explains that Peverel was looking for a “fresh approach” to retirement living from the students. He hoped that they would have something new to bring to the table and was looking for innovative ideas to take to the developers with whom Peverel works on a regular basis.

Forty-four entries were received for the competition from eight universities. A panel of expert judges including Cynthia Gibbs, business liaison manager for Peverel Retirement; David Sparks, managing director of Great Homes; and Graeme Brooker, director and Drew Plunkett, fellow of Interior Educators, decided on the winners.

The top prize of £1000 went to American Intercontinental University student, Margherita De Eccher, who donated her prize money to an orphanage in Madagascar. Sophie Hull, a design student from Leeds College of Art took second prize and the runners-up were Jennifer Campbell and Debbie Allan from the Glasgow School of Art and Ameena AlSamarae from Manchester School of Art.

Explaining the judges’ decision, Graeme Brooker, said: “The judges’ expertise and knowledge came together to choose our winners fairly, from both an academic and property management point of view. All five winners deserved their places as all had not only met the brief but went one step further taking the future of retirement living into great consideration in terms of space and design.”

Margherita’s winning entry gave flexible living space top priority, designing a home in which the walls were demountable and so could be easily moved to create spaces appropriate to the way rooms would be used at any given time. Her designs were geared towards creating easy-to-use, adaptable spaces that would be accessible and comfortable for people to live in regardless of their age. “ I wanted to make the space very flexible and made a prototype of how it might work,” she explained. “The doors and walls could all slide and disappear to make circulation easier and even fixtures and fittings like bookshelves and worktops are adjustable. My design was strongly focused on making this house the last move so that you won’t have the stress of finding new accommodation in later life,” she added.

Keith Edgar was impressed by the number and quality of the competition entries. “Too often when someone mentions independent living, people’s assumption is that this means a care home. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. We champion independent living in all our developments, encouraging socialisation through group activities and communal spaces. All five winners really understood this,” he said:

So will the competition be held again? Keith thinks it likely that Peverel will repeat the exercise but next time the criteria will be even more challenging. “What I would like to see,” he said “is consideration given not only to flexible design and the critical nature of communication services but also to building costs and maintenance”. ●

Fixtures and fittings like bookshelves and worktops are adjustable

Peverel retirement manages 1,500 developments, comprising 65,000 properties. Its retirement schemes comprise individual leasehold apartments, cottages and bungalows in secure, purpose-built developments. Web www.peverelretirement.co.uk