Many of us will die in rooms like this. Or spend our final days playing backgammon in one. Fuck me, that's depressing enough without having to deal with this interior. You can imagine the design meeting. "Old people love hospital furniture in pastel colours that look faded when really they're new," says one experienced care home solutions provider. "Yes," replies the interior designer. "And we can pick up the puce green theme and use it for the curtains and some of the walls."And someone will need to talk me through the lighting strategy, which seems designed to dazzle the already-half-blind residents or make them feel as if they're on stage. And not in a good way.
The exterior's not bad though:
Ha! Tricked you!. It's fucking awful, of course, as every single new care home I see always is.The people in our society we should value the most, who have earned a bit of dignity and repose are treated to colour schemes majoring on beige and 'streetscapes' that enjoy an unlikely combination of tweeness and gratuitous modern 'touches' (these presumably to reassure the architect that he/she hasn't totally sold out - newsflash, you have) like ridiculous planes of timber and louvres.
I also love the double fencing to the left of this picture - steel for keeping teenage drug thieves out, wood for keeping dementia-fuelled oldies in. I wonder if guard dogs patrol between them.
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The fence combination reminds me of a security strategy employed by zoos to keep people out/keep the animals in. Maybe they could have just dug a big moat around the whole place instead?
ReplyDeleteYou're right. I was thinking Berlin wall, but a zoo is a perfect analogy.
ReplyDeleteI like the design. It is modern for a care home and the care provided is good. If the care is good thats the main thing. It looks ok to me. I take it you have created this site beacuse your architecture is not good enough to win a tender? Have we a chip on our shoulder?
ReplyDeleteOh god, I've got nothing but chips. Chips for shoulders, mate. Are you an old and infirm person?
ReplyDeleteYou can't blame the architect for the inside. Healthcare companies have their own (anger of buggered scheme mode on) damned interior designers, who all seem to really like pink chairs, green carpets and flowery swaggy curtains.
ReplyDeleteHey, it's me, once again. And I still hate your blog :D care homes are supposed to be comforting and warm. I wouldn't mind dying here
ReplyDeleteYou should check out Estuary View medical centre in Whitstable. Driving past I can't decide which is worse, itself, or the asinine housing development opposite. Although there is that masochistic tendency that hopes they'll be happy together.
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