Obama-cho, Unzen City, Nagasaki Prefecture, is a town that has been crowded with tourists as a hot spring tourist destination. As a reconstruction project due to the deterioration of a nursing home located on a hill overlooking Tachibana Bay, we created an environment where the elderly who have lived in this town can enjoy a relaxing hot spring bath and a wonderful view of the sea from each private room, thereby creating a safe and comfortable living environment for them. By reusing part of the existing building and renovating the interior, the area to reside was shifted to a day care facility. The exterior design is based on the motif of an original landscape of accommodations in a hot spring tourist resort.
Many facilities for the elderly are built from an administrator's point of view, and interior materials are selected with an emphasis on maintainability, which tends to result in spaces insipid like those in hospitals. In consideration of the fact that this is a living space, carpet was used for flooring, and wood was used for fixtures, handrails, and flooring as much as possible to create a relaxing environment for the elderly to live in. In addition, privacy is an issue in the lives of the elderly. The new building is designed to make the best use of the great location by changing the multi-bed rooms to all private rooms and slanting the exterior walls with large windows to face the sea, so that every room has a view of the ocean. We have also installed spacious bathrooms that use hot spring water and footbaths for visitors to use, as well as a footbath that can be accessed by wheelchairs to allow the elderly, who are becoming more severely ill, to take a bath in the hot spring.
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