Chengdu CHUNTAI YUE Rural Home Care for Elderly — Offering a third choice for Chinese seniors / Yijian Architects

Awards:
1. 2022 Pro+ Award - Gold Award for Public Buildings， Shanghai Architectural Society
2. 2023 ICONIC Award Innovation Architecture – WINNER， German Design Council
3. 2024 German Design Award— WINNER， German Design Council
4. 2024 Pro+ Award - Gold Award for Planning，Shanghai Architectural Society

The aging of population becomes much more serious in China. By 2030, the population of people over 60 years old in China is projected to reach 350 million. Under this background, we try to offer a third choice for the elderly in China, other than staying at home or nursing homes. While satisfying the privacy and comfort at home, it is a health-care apartment which provides health monitoring, pastoral experience, rich cultural activities, and various kinds of supporting facilities. —— Dr. Cheng

Project Positioning
CHUNTAI YUE Rural Health Care Project is located in Chuntai Village, Youai Town, Pidu District, Chengdu, Sichuan. The site is surrounded by typical Linpan scenes of western Sichuan, with a natural irrigation system formed by a dense network of streams. Linpan settlements originated during the Ancient Shu Civilization and has lasted for thousands of years. It is a typical pastoral lifestyle in Chengdu Plain. The positioning of Chuntaiyue Pastoral Health-care Project is to well integrate the building with surrounding rural environment, make it a destination for the old to experience the pastoral lifestyle and to appreciate the countryside leisure, and build an image of “Pastoral Health-care” for Chengdu.
The project is planned to occupy 1000 acres, of which the 200 acres is for construction and the other 800 acres is for farmland and planting seedling, serving as the supporting landscape and farms. The land for construction is divided into three pieces, scattered in the 1000 acres planned land. Chuntaiyue Pastoral Health-care Project is the first phase of the development, and it is located on a land of 86 acres. It is integrated with the surrounding fields and seedings, reflecting the new concept of “Natural Healing, Ecological Health-care”. It is an innovative attempt to combine the natural environment of Linpan in Chengdu with the health-care living space. The project is positioned as a health-care facility mainly for the energetic elderly. It consists of a pastoral experience center, a pastoral health-care hotel, health-care experience area around sunken plaza, and health-care apartment buildings, which are 29 multi-story buildings with more than 600 apartments.

Overall Layout - Planning structure of “two axis, multiple courtyards” creates a diverse and multi-dimensional healthcare experience area.
The master plan is in the layout of “two axis, multiple courtyards”. The buildings unfold layer by layer, surrounding two landscape axis, six group courtyards and three sunken courtyards. Since the planning requirement limits the overall length of the buildings to no more than 40 meters, the narrower buildings are placed along the site boundaries, while the longer buildings are arranged inside. The four types of health-care apartments are combined in different ways according to the buildings’ length, forming a well-proportioned rhythm.
The N-S axis starts from the pastoral exhibition center and extends to the north. The two sunken courtyards on the N-S axis are connected to the one on the E-W axis. An L-shaped health-care experience area is placed surrounding the three sunken courtyards, and includes a health center, a dining center, and a culture center. The health center includes traditional Chinese medicine consultation, a spa swimming pool, health management, a gym, table tennis rooms and dance rooms. The dining center includes restaurants, cafés, and a healthy canteen. The cultural center covers the functions such as calligraphy, music appreciation, audio-media rooms, chess and card rooms, karaoke, multi-function hall, forming a multi-dimensional public activity space. Such design moves the activity rooms and cultural classrooms which are usually located on the ground floor in the conventional health-care building, to the sunken courtyard, so that the elderly can gather and communicate more. The elderly in each group can go directly to the public activity space on the basement floor, by taking the nearest elevators in the group or through outdoor covered corridors, without being affected by the weather.
In addition to the L-shaped healthcare experience area, there is a health-care hotel with 80 guest rooms on the south side of the site, adjacent to the farmland. It not only provides accommodation to the relatives and friends who come to visit the elderly living here, but also provides convenience to the elderly and their families who want to shortly experience pastoral health lives.

Aging-friendly Health-care Apartment
The design of the 27 health-care apartment buildings aims to reflect their dialogue with the surrounding countryside. Since the surrounding local dwellings mostly use red bricks or cement for their façade, we also choose rustic and plain material for the façade of the apartment buildings. To echo with the rural elements of the local dwellings, the upper part of the buildings’ exterior walls is painted with red brick-like paint, and the lower part is powder paint of earth tone. Together with glass railings and dark grey lines on the façade, the entire buildings are presented in a concise modern pastoral style, integrated with the surrounding pastoral scenery.
The foyer of each apartment building leads to the courtyard, which is intended to trigger encounters and communications. The foyers of different buildings are linked by a covered outdoor corridor, which not only makes the elderly travel without being affected by the weather, but also provides a space for them to stop, stay, and rest.
In order to improve the quality, the design team visited a number of nursing homes for research. During this process, it was found that though many nursing homes can provide the daily care and health monitoring, they did not meet the inner needs of the elderly who desire to communicate more and relieve loneliness. Therefore, the design team starts from environmental psychology and designs a series of active outdoor spaces, hoping to encourage more interactions among the elderly. For example, because of the different combinations of room types, residents on each floor are connected through a closed corridor, which is convenient for the staff to provide services and manage. In order to encourage communication and to improve the feeling in the single linear space, we widen the corridor and designed several lighting atriums, making it a popular communication space.
There are four room types, all of which are equipped with large balconies. The apartment on the top floor has a roof terrace, providing different health-care experience to the elderly. When arranging the plan of the health-care apartment, we pay attention to positioning and analyze the need of the target people. We fully consider how aging-friendly design, including the width of wheelchair passages, the continuous handrails in the public areas and having accessible bathrooms, can provide comfortable and smooth living for people of all ages. The indoor furniture and external corners are rounded off to avoid accidental bumps.