This paper sets out to investigate if and how a spatial typology for extra care housing (ECH) can be defined within the context of housing for older people in the UK. In particular, it focuses on the concept of domesticity in relation to the perception of public, semi-public and private domains.
Four sheltered housing schemes that have been remodelled into ECH within the past four years, have been selected as case studies. The spatial distribution of various public, semi-public, and private domains of the pre-remodelled and
remodelled schemes have been analyzed quantitatively and interpretively, to determine how their distribution might help bolster or undermine the ethos behind ECH. Likewise, the spatial layouts of the sheltered, as well as the extra care
schemes have been analysed syntactically, to determine how different spatial morphologies and their probabilistic functions might begin to help define ECH as a new type of group housing for older people.
The findings of the paper suggest that the extent to which the spatial configuration of a scheme affects one’s notions of self-containment and control, has a direct impact on whether the scheme performs as a building or as a settlement. It is furthermore argued that the more a scheme functions as a settlement, the less institutional it may feel. Thus, as a typology, a successful
extra care scheme can be defined as a building that works as a settlement
