Architecture
Millennium Care Village: ’pandemic-proof’ design
In December, Millennium Care secured planning permission from Wigan Council for a ‘pandemic-proof’ facility in Standish. Here, Alex Caruso of Alessandro Caruso Architects and Beth Brydges of Millennium Care explain how the state-of-the-art design incorporates both dementia and pandemic-proof design principles
TCHE: Why did Millennium Care decide to design a new care home during the pandemic?
Brydges: The coronavirus pandemic led Millennium Care to rethink future homes to address keeping people safe while minimising the risks of loneliness and isolation. If there is one thing the pandemic has highlighted, it is the importance of the social care sector and particularly, the role that care homes play in supporting the NHS. Furthermore, research shows that the
UK will need 10,000 new beds every year until 2030 to meet demand. Therefore, we plan to play our part in meeting growing demand while rethinking the traditional design to cater for future pandemics and the devastating effects of a prolonged lockdown.
TCHE: What are you proposing to build?
Brydges: A £5m, ‘pandemic-proof” EMI (elderly mentally infirm) care home in Standish on the site of our existing Lakeside and Worthington Lake care homes. It will comprise of 48 high-end rooms for residents, along with specialist wellbeing facilities such as indoor botanical and therapeutic gardens, bird-watching observation decks, a woodland lake trail, art and music therapy rooms and physiotherapy and fitness rooms. We plan to build on the success of Worthington Lake, which opened in 2019 and won a top 20 care home award.
The proposed building is designed based on a unique household model of dementia care, in line with Stirling University’s research, which supports successful wellbeing care outcomes in lockdown and isolation. This contributes to empowerment and mitigates the risk of loneliness, helplessness and isolation. Crucially, it also allows people with dementia to live as independently as possible without compromising their safety.
TCHE: Why are you building on this site?
Brydges: Our plans are to create the Millennium Care Village, a centre of excellence for caring for the elderly in
The variety of spaces designed will offer the residents a choice of privacy or social interaction, whilst observing social distancing. Also, a pandemic-proof visitation pavilion ensures visits can continue now and in the future
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Standish. This cannot be replicated on another site due to it forming part of the existing communities of Lakeside and Worthington Lake care homes. The benefit of doing so is to reduce the risk of transfer trauma, which is the detrimental emotional and physical upheaval of moving care homes to an unfamiliar site and setting.
Caruso: The proposed building will provide continuity of care to the residents of the existing campus, should their care requirements change. In fact, the specialist EMI care home is one of the first, bespoke designs to combine both the principles of dementia and pandemic-proof design.
TCHE: What have been the challenges with the development?
Caruso:Firstly, due to the lockdowns, being able to visit the site in a Covid-safe way, to understand what is already working, presented a challenge. However, we managed to get around this with the use of
www.thecarehomeenvironment.com February 2022
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