How should care homes be designed? Should the places we spend the end of our lives be clinical and bland, or should they be places that are beautiful, inspiring and actually are something we look forward to going to. As Lori says in this interview, "you don't stop living just because you're in a care home, in fact you should start living better".
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet is a force of good, she is director of Park Grove Design, which focuses on creating comfortable spaces for our third age. In fact she also has a podcast, which I recommend you look up, ThirdAge.design. In our podcast together here, we talk about the origin of the Care Home is still stuck in its original format, that of a "hospital", and she shares with us some thought-leader suggestions on how we can design better spaces to create homes that are better.
Lori is also passionate about Biophilic Design, she is down-to-earth and practical but designs with such sensitivity and vision that I hope I end up in a home she has designed.
Have a listen to see how we should be designing with the people in mind, how we should be thinking what lives that generation may have had, what were their life experiences, how should we improve the acoustics, how can we incorporate getting outside into nature, maybe participating in producing food for the kitchens, what about the colourways of the floor to support those with dementia, how we can create the feeling of contentment, can we incorporate scents, sounds, views to create an experiential sensory home to uplift and create beautiful inspiring places.
You'll come away from this podcast, wondering why all Care Homes don't incorporate these design features.
Lori also talks about her experiences in Japan and some of her designs including that with the Royal Hospital Chelsea for the Chelsea Pensioners, where she is incorporating echoes of the Chelsea Physic Garden into the design. One of her loudest wake up calls though is for the supply chain to talk to each other. There are many solutions we can find together if we communicate.
Lori also is on the British Standards Committee for furniture fabrics, and is passionate about reducing the chemicals used in surface materials. I'm also in favour of that, because as we know, reduce the VOCs helps reduce health complications and also CO2 emissions. There are lots of more natural solutions that Biophilic Design encourages, so let's put our thinking heads, and our purse strings together and start creating Third Age Biophilically Designed Homes.
For more information on Lori's practice please do visit her websites www.parkgrove.co.uk and www.thirdage.design.
Credits: with thanks to George Harvey Audio Production for the calming biophilic soundscape that backs all our podcasts.
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