Our team is committed to creating new and responsive solutions to aged care and retirement living challenges. We use co-design to integrate new ideas and engage stakeholders.
As the population ages, Australia needs more aged care facilities – not all of them built along traditional lines. Back in 2024, when the Australian government launched its National Aged Care Design Principles and Guidelines, it recognised the need for greater flexibility by specifying that seniors should be able to go outdoors, connect with community, cultivate a home, and have enough support to live a healthy, happy life.
At Deicke Richards, we are committed to providing architecture that gives residents all these opportunities.
Our designs are enabling. To help residents interact with the outside world, we recognise the importance of courtyards, conservatories, BBQ areas, cafés, folding walls, opening windows, and expansive views. We include gathering spaces of all kinds, from conversation nooks to hobby venues. We ensure that every occupant enjoys as much natural light and cross-ventilation as possible, and our interiors are warm and welcoming, with appealing colours and textures, and artwork chosen to engage.
Features like this not only meet national guidelines, but fulfill our desire to help elderly Australians make the most of their final years. Our Seniors Living team have a particular interest in ‘home-like’ residential care, where residents live in smaller, domestic households. Principal Ingrid Marshall has researched this model all over the world, and is convinced of its viability, not to mention its popularity. Both her parents and her grandmothers ended up in retirement homes, so her interest in seniors housing is both passionate and personal.
Equally fervent is our senior interior designer, Magda Myszkowski, who has trained in dementia prevention and leads creative workshops for seniors and people living with dementia. Designing for dementia is a specialised skill; we have honed our expertise in improving accessibility and minimising the visual impact of clinical support without reducing efficient service. We also use colour palettes, artworks, and other factors to help residents orient themselves, both mentally and physically.
To cultivate a home, you need to age in place, and the key to that is integration. A truly integrated access to care is one that meets evolving needs and expectations. It allows people to move with ease, whether from room to garden or from a retirement village to a nursing facility. At Deicke Richards, we are acutely aware of this need for flexibility in the whole sector as well as individual projects. Our capacity to evolve alongside the changing landscape of retirement living and aged care means that we can consistently promote the comfort and wellbeing of seniors, drawing on many years of experience in the field.
We are veterans of local government approval processes. We have perfected the art of analysing how the physical elements of a structure interact with its surroundings. We have worked with both commercial and not-for-profit providers, offering a carefully judged mix of strategic urban design and master-planning advice, while keeping our focus firmly on our clients’ financial and operational drivers.
We believe that elegant and thoughtful design can enhance the lives of seniors and the people who care for them.
‘Deicke Richards were a pleasure to work with. Our budget and program requirements were all met … most importantly, our resident community has been thrilled with the new recreational spaces, and the redevelopment has been exceptionally well received.’
– Siobhan Greathead, Senior Development Manager, Aveo