London: RIBA publishes our Later Living Guide
Two years ago, we brought the industry together for our Later Life Living conference, held in collaboration with Building magazine, to explore how we can create better places for an ageing population. Now, we’re taking that conversation forward with the launch of The Later Living Guide: Age-Inclusive Residential Design, published by RIBA.
The guide is the culmination of our two-year Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) with the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art (RCA), part-funded by Innovate UK. The KTP gave us the opportunity to step beyond individual projects and investigate later living at a much broader level: how people’s needs and aspirations change as they age, how their homes can support independence and wellbeing, and what the UK can learn from successful approaches elsewhere.
Working closely with the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design brought together our architectural and residential expertise with the RCA team’s expertise in inclusive design and research. Over two years, we examined international evidence and later-living exemplars, challenged established assumptions about specialist housing and explored how those findings could be translated into practical principles for architects, developers and others involved in delivering new homes.
The scale of the challenge is significant. The UK currently builds around 7,000 later-living homes each year, while approximately 2,000 are demolished, leaving a net increase of only around 5,000 homes against a recommended target of at least 30,000 a year.
But increasing supply is only part of the answer. Around £2.9 trillion in housing asset wealth is held by people over 65, yet many will not move from their existing homes if the alternatives are not sufficiently attractive. Creating desirable, adaptable homes for later life can support independence and wellbeing while potentially releasing larger existing properties back into the wider housing market.
The implications extend beyond housing. Our research also explored the relationship between unsuitable housing, later-life care and pressure on health services, including the substantial cost associated with people remaining in hospital when they are medically ready to leave but do not have appropriate housing or care to return to.
The Later Living Guide translates the research into something practical. It examines around 15 international exemplars, identifying what contributes to successful later-living environments and turning those lessons into design principles that can help raise expectations and standards across the sector.
Published by RIBA, the guide brings together a journey developed through two years of research with the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art. The ambition is to move beyond later-living housing as a response to necessity and towards desirable, sociable and adaptable places that people actively choose to call home.
The Later Living Guide: Age-Inclusive Residential Design is available to pre-order on Amazon UK.
"The UK is paying a heavy price for a failed system instead of investing in better future, which will save money in the long term. We wanted to start an important conversation with the industry about what needs to change in later living, and the Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP), which was supported by Innovate UK, gave us the opportunity to investigate those questions in much greater depth. Working with the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art brought together architectural practice and inclusive-design research, allowing us to learn from international exemplars and turn that knowledge into principles that can be applied in practice.”
"The consequences of ignoring the stagnation in the later living housing sector extend far beyond housing. We have an overstretched NHS footing the bill for the UK’s outdated and poorly planned approach to later-life living. We’re spending nearly £13 billion a year just to house people in hospital beds who shouldn’t be there, and far too many older people have been placed into a care home unnecessarily, simply because we haven’t provided appropriate housing solutions that allow people to age well in their home. ”
— James Pickard, Founding Director
