The main persona that “The Elderly Village” is targeted towards is the Elderly community, which includes those who are active and those who are disabled.
There are three types of rooms available that promote communal living: Standard Room, Superior Room and Deluxe Room.
The Standard Room allows for 1 disabled elderly and 2 active elderly to live together, The Superior Room allows for 3 active elderly to live together and lastly, The Deluxe Room allows for 2 disabled elderly to cohabit. All the units have a bench located outside the main door, along the corridor, to promote more interactions between residents. Furthermore, the kitchen is located behind a glass window, facing towards the corridor, such that the residents are able to connect with their neighbours more easily as they are able to see each other walking past the corridor.
As the older buildings within the site are 4 - 5 floors high and have a smaller floor area, I decided to allocate the communal facilities within the older buildings while creating new residential individual blocks around the them. As a way to connect the old and new buildings together, skywalks are created between each floor, where pockets of space allow for resting and chatting among neighbours. The skywalks would also include the space of the corridors for each unit such that they are more open for congregation. Elevator and staircase cores are also connected to the skywalk such that residents would need to walk along the corridors to enter their unit. The design of the skywalk to cut through some older buildings is a crucial step in getting people to interact with others more. When travelling along certain paths, they would be forced to cut through some buildings which allows for creation of new relationships between people.
Furthermore, in the site, there is a central courtyard where people would be able to gather and rest.