Problem
Old people need old people, but they also need the young, and young people need contact with the old.
Solution
Create dwellings for some 50 old people in every neighborhood. Place these dwellings in three rings…
- A central core with cooking and nursing provided.
- Cottages near the core.
- Cottages further out from the core, mixed among the other houses of the neighborhood, but never more than 200 yards from the core.
…in such a way that the 50 houses together form a single coherent swarm, with its own clear center, but interlocked at its periphery with other ordinary houses of the neighborhood.
Related Patterns
… when neighborhoods are properly formed they give the people there a cross section of ages and stages of development - Identifiable Neighborhood (14), Life Cycle (26), Household Mix (35); however, the old people are so often forgotten and left alone in modern society, that it is necessary to formulate a special pattern which underlines their needs.
Treat the core like any group house; make sure all the cottages, both those close to and those further away, small - Old Age Cottage (155), some of them perhaps connected to the larger family houses in the neighborhoods - The Family (75); provide every second or third core with proper nursing facilities; somewhere in the orbit of the old age pocket, provide the kind of work which old people can manage best - especially teaching and looking after tiny children - Network of Learning (18), Children’s Home (86), Settled Work (156), Vegetable Garden (177) …
Alexander, Christopher. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 215.