West Bridgford – The interiors, designed by Care Home Interiors based in Hampshire, focus on the location near sports facilities.
The design was developed with the residents who would be living there in mind, resulting in a home that is truly community-focused—an attractive, welcoming place with plenty of room for community groups, meetings, and events.
Offering 72 bedrooms arranged over five storeys, with a rooftop terrace on the sixth floor, it is set on a comparatively small and irregularly shaped site.
Four resident communities have been created, one per floor above ground-floor level. Each community has a maximum of 18 residents and is supported by its own open-plan lounge/dining room and separate quiet lounge. In addition, each floor has an assisted bathroom, an assisted WC, and ancillary rooms.
The home also boasts communal facilities on the ground floor, including a bistro café, an activity room, a garden lounge, a hair and beauty salon, and a cinema/multi-purpose room.
Each community has access to the outdoors with a range of spaces, whether from a secure large balcony off the lounge/dining room, the ground-floor communal gardens overlooking the activity of the car park, or the communal rooftop terrace, which has views across the Nottingham skyline and directly into Trent Bridge Cricket Ground.
The residents’ lounge and dining rooms have been centrally located where the two 8/10-bedroom wings meet, ensuring ease of wayfinding.
The interior has been thoughtfully designed with dementia in mind, featuring short corridors, plenty of natural light, and destination points. It also utilises colour, light, texture, and materiality to support the care needs of the residents.
The judges said:
“This blew us away. It was very brave to choose such a city centre location next to very, very busy roads, but we have rarely been to a care home so warm and welcoming from the moment you walk in.
“The residents we spoke to loved it there. There are so many great breakout areas, and the verticality shortens travel times for residents who may have issues with mobility. The whole building feels light and airy, and it has been extremely cleverly designed. We have this mental image of a care home as being typically suburban, low-level, and often sprawling, and this is really showing a different way of doing things and could lead to a paradigm change. This cannot have been an easy brief, but it has been done very, very well.”
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