Categories: Special Categories
Best Project Constructed under $2 Million
Design Award
Jury Citation:
“This is a refreshing intervention that gave new life to a previously empty space. The interior is appropriate for old people in terms of its ambience and the use of colours is effective, refreshing and not overdone.
The program, however, deserves mention as much as the design. The judges would like to commend Montfort Care, the client agency, for its innovative brief and for the interesting strategy to engage the aged people and draw them out of their homes.”
Goodlife! Makan is an innovative social initiative created by Montfort Care, a voluntary welfare organisation, to support ageing-in-place, built around meaningful pastimes that address the physical and mental wellness of seniors. This cheerfully designed 360sqm centre is a recreational facility, situated at the void deck of HDB flats in Marine Parade, with a communal kitchen at its nucleus.
The design explores how the ritual of food preparation and consumption can be a generator of refreshing culinary and social experiences that bring not just elderly, but also friends and the wider community together. To begin, the design transformed the void deck into a social nucleus centred around the communal activity of food.
Respecting the spatial quality of a void deck, the design capitalised on its porous setting to create an open and fenceless compound, to reduce social stigma and address the psyche of the stay-alone seniors. The experimental design shifts away from conventional gated or glazed-up elderly activity centre models to create an inviting communal space, seamlessly integrated with surrounding streets and walkways. This notion of openness extends to the interior space where the kitchen component forms the vibrant heart of the open plan, around which spaces were organised to complement the preparation and partaking of food.
Aligning with the client’s vision of ageing as an active and lively process, a vivid palette of colours and textures are used to create a distinctive and vibrant setting for the seniors. An integrated shelving system housing full-bodied local spices, food ingredients and utensils are employed as wider textural indicators to reinforce the refreshing colour zoning and subtle differentiation of the zones. The sense of inclusivity extends to the details of the iconography that transcend beyond text as the universal language to communicate with elderly from all languages and ethnic backgrounds.
