Ten Kerselaere Residential Care Center / Atelier Kempe Thill

Amidst the fields. In 2013 Atelier Kempe Thill won together with Daniel van Doorslaer an invited competition for the construction of a new retirement home in the small rural town of Heist-op-den-Berg in Flanders, Belgium. The task requested the substantial extension (c. 120 new residential units) of an existing senior housing center from the 1970s. The proposed concept was a master plan with four elongated urban villas in an open and car-free park. This idea plays on the one hand with the small-scale and rural context of the surrounding area, while emphasizing the horizontal character of the Flemish landscape with its two to three-story buildings. On the other hand, the master plan allows a step-by-step implementation with a reasonable degree of architectural freedom for each building. Each urban villa intends its design to serve the specific needs of its target group and implements the possibilities of the available budget and the design funding guidelines. The resulting master plan reflects and reveals with its differentiated "care landscape for the elderly" the social complexity of senior care in the twenty-first century.