This disability care and accommodation centre for both adults and children seeks to 'de-institutionalise' the typical care facility by providing a dynamic curving plan and facades, sensory-inviting materials and a 'domestic-type' layout with communal (i.e. kitchen & lounge) facilities located centrally.
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Designed by Jackson Clements Burrows Architects (JCBA), the Coppel & Piekarski Family Disability Respite Centre by Jewish Care in Caulfield, Victoria provides short-term accommodation and care for children and adults with varying disabilities while allowing carers to have essential time out.
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The building typology is similar to that of the late-modern approach to early childhood centres - with its curving layout in plan and all spaces leading off a central core enabling great connections to the outdoors, to natural sunlight and cross-ventilation.
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Special attention has been paid to the way the building approaches the street and wider community, with the "out-stretched" and welcoming semi-transparent canopy (an abstracted symbolic gesture referencing the ‘Star of David’), semi-transparent (and not too high) fencing, way-finding signage and landscaped areas (including sculptures and areas for rest and play).
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Round skylights help to imbue the internal spaces with natural daylight, whilst colourful glazed bricks internally break up the neutral brick palette and provides a sense of delight to the spatial experience.
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Colours used internally in the glazed bricks are then echoed cleverly to the outdoor play-scapes - with colourful turf sporting mounds, patterns and play equipment for the younger inhabitants of the centre.
“Jewish Care Victoria welcomed and encouraged an architectural approach that re-imagined the care-facility typology, and they sought a domesticity that was seen as an extension of a guest’s home,” says JCBA Project Architect Rob Majcen.
It is an approach that is taken by many EC architectural typologies and could be said should be applied to many others....
Via InDesign.