The project Huis Assendorp was focused on changing the retirement home into a housing complex that meet the requirements of today’s and tomorrow’s senior citizens. We did this together with the extraordinary involvement of local communities.

When we started in 2015, this retirement home was rented out to a healthcare organization and partly uninhabited. We asked the local community: “How do you want to grow old in this neighbourhood?”. We collected over 1000 wishes from tenants, their family, healthcare employees and the people living in the neighbourhood. Their wishes were clear: also when you’re older, you want to be full of life. Seniors are looking for affordable and safe housing, with healthcare nearby (but not visible in the apartment), social interaction (meetings, socialization, energizing, and the ability to feel useful) as well as self-determination (taking charge, emancipation, and making your own choices).

Based on these wishes, we started the transformation. We started by completely renovating and redecorating the building to make sure the building does not look like your average retirement home. We placed solar panels on the roof, crowdfunded by the local community.

But we also wanted Huis Assendorp to become a vivid community, a place where people from all ages could meet each other. By living there, or by visiting regularly. We wanted Huis Assendorp to open its doors to the local community.

Huis Assendorp is located in a neighbourhood in Zwolle where a lot of students live. Students let us know that they also wanted to live here, next door to the seniors. We therefore started to let several apartments to students. They received a discount on the rent and in return they did all kinds of chores and activities with their senior neighbours. We call that ‘noabuurschap’ or ‘being a good neighbour’.

Also entrepreneurs started to join. Today, Huis Assendorp houses a beauty salon, physiotherapy, a hair salon, a day care facility and a pedicure and there’s room for more! We started a collaboration with Dutch premier league football club PEC Zwolle, several talented young female footballers started to live here. This collaboration also resulted in senior tenants to start visiting football matches of PEC.

And as time passed, also more and more younger seniors applied to live in Huis Assendorp because they wanted to contribute to the community and also wanted to be prepared for the future, when they might need (more) care. They started to organize art clubs and expositions in Huis Assendorp and cook and eat together in the common kitchen.

Huis Assendorp is meant for seniors. However, we found out that adding a small amount of generations is a great way to realize a vibrant community. Younger seniors and older seniors, students and even children become friends, look after each other and learn from each other. And make Huis Assendorp full of life!

www.huisassendorp.nl