The Netherlands are ageing, which is felt especially by the post-war residential areas. The risks for the elderly: problems with pavements, high staircases and social isolation. It is high time that plans are designed to make the Netherlands ageing-proof. Diederendirrix made a plan for the Rotterdam area Carnisse. “Here we encounter two problems,” architect Tomas Dirrix explains. The first problem is that a large part of the area consists of houses with a porch that have entrance stairs of one metre high, which is quite a climb for some elderly people. The second problem concerns the architecture: streets with terraced houses have side streets without a destination: the streets only have sidewalls and no front doors.

Diederendirrix’ design is one of the winners of the WHO CARES competition, a design competition for new ways of housing and health care.

Read the full article in de Volkskrant