Witherford Watson Mann’s Appleby Blue Almshouse in London aims to de-institutionalise housing for older people It is a bright spring day and the early March sun is raking through the Garden Room, the communal heart of Appleby Blue, a new almshouse in London’s Bermondsey, just south of the Thames. Captured in photographs, the Garden Room has that familiar, static, ‘architectural’ quality: devoid of people, furniture arranged just so, light carefully calibrated. On its south side, it opens up to a courtyard animated by ginkgo trees and narrow reflecting pools. But in real life, the double‑height space is a glorious tumult of noise, colour, people and intergenerational activity. There is nothing static about it. At one end, a baby and toddler group is volubly making its presence felt, and at the other, the community kitchen, which also functions as a cookery school, is in full swing, while elderly residents are animatedly chatting and drinking tea. As the building’s physical and social fulcrum, the Garden Room is designed to support an array of activities. Beyond the daily routines of eating, drinking, gossiping and watching the world go by, these might include coffee mornings, film nights, dance classes, markets, music performances, plays and making workshops. The kinetic human theatre of this ‘civic room’ can be apprehended from the street through a glazed walkway, like an elongated, ribbed vitrine that projects out along the main facade. ‘The idea was to build right in the heart of the community, in a busy place, with a very direct relationship to the high street, not to hide people away,’ says Stephen Witherford of architects Witherford Watson Mann (WWM). Redolent of pastoral benevolence and distressed gentlefolk, the term ‘almshouse’ conjures a sense of passivity and parsimony, of cellular dwellings arrayed around courtyards, sequestered from the outside world. As a building type, its origins extend back centuries, giving a semblance of dignity to the poor, the old, the sick and the marginalised. Appleby Blue’s client, United St Saviour’s, a Southwark‑based charity, currently owns and operates Hopton’s Almshouses near the swishy precincts of Tate Modern, constructed in 1752 with money left by philanthropist Charles Hopton. Typical of its time, it takes the form of a two‑storey ensemble of austere Georgian buildings arranged around a U‑shaped courtyard. United St Saviour’s itself traces its roots as a charity back to the 16th century. For WWM, the challenge was not only how to reconceptualise the traditional almshouse form, but how to look beyond the simple provision of housing and conceive it as the locus of a hosting network – a set of rooms to be shared with like‑minded local organisations. St Saviour’s is also a grant‑making trust that supports refugee groups and youth centres as well as cultural organisations. The idea is that these will make use of the building’s communal spaces, so it feels like an integral part of local life, rather than a secluded retirement home. Set on meandering Southwark Park Road, the site contends with tightly packed Victorian terraces and gardens to the south, and a looser agglomeration of postwar blocks to the north. Previously, it was occupied by a vacated care home, which, though theoretically catering for a similar demographic, negated any sense of connection with the wider world. Both in its architecture and operation, Appleby Blue is a consciously extrovert presence and a retort to the all‑too‑prevalent notion that older people should be shunted to the urban and sociocultural margins, with invariably adverse consequences for their mental and physical health.  ‘Hosting an array of activities, the Garden Room is Appleby Blue’s physical and social fulcrum’ From upmarket private retirement communities to sheltered housing, the options available to people as they grow older usually involve some form of retreat, strategically distanced from the bustle of the wider community. Yet as people live longer and remain active (10 per cent of the world’s population is currently over 65; by 2050 the UN estimates this will rise to 16 per cent), not everyone wants to withdraw from city life. Given the choice, many prefer to remain in or around their old urban neighbourhoods, connected to social and familial networks.  Reinventing the almshouse for the modern era as a place of care, shelter and social connection, Appleby Blue constitutes a different model. Aimed at those over 65 who meet the charity’s definition of being in financial need and who have lived in Southwark for more than three years, it contains 59 dwellings and can accommodate single people and couples. Extending along Southwark Park Road, a five‑storey block of mottled brown and blue brick completes the street line. To the rear, deferring to the scale of the Victorian terraces, it steps down to a smaller, two‑storey volume. Within the five‑storey block, floor heights are slightly reduced the higher up you go, with the topmost floor articulated as an attic storey wrapped in zinc. Pale oak window frames expressively counterpoint the dark brick and metal. Instead of rent, almshouse residents pay a maintenance contribution, which is lower than the average rent of local properties rented from a council, housing association or private landlord, to help cover the costs of running and maintaining the housing. This model of affordability dates back to the early days of almshouses, in which it was stipulated that ‘by living in this almshouse the residents will face no greater hardship’.  A key move in the architects’ ambition to de‑institutionalise the building was the abolition of claustrophobic and disorientating internal corridors. Instead, access to individual flats is by means of glazed galleries that wrap around the south side of the main block. Furnished with robust oak benches, quarry‑tiled floors and planting boxes, which residents can populate as they see fit, the galleries function as informal inside/outside spaces in which to sit or chat with neighbours, while savouring enviable views of the Victorian terrace gardens and the hills of suburban London beyond. In warmer weather, the galleries can be opened up through large sliding screens, introducing fresh air and the sounds and scents of the outside world.  Accentuating this connection with nature is another important aspect of the scheme, manifest in a trio of gardens that extend and enrich the living environment. Along with the main ginkgo courtyard, a more modest green enclave runs along the south edge of the building, while the two‑storey block is topped with a roof garden of raised beds and sitting nooks. Dedicated to cultivating produce for use in the kitchen, it is maintained by a local gardening group, although residents can also make horticultural contributions.  Ranging in size from 55m2 for a one‑bed flat, to 79m2 for a two‑bedroom unit, apartments are compactly but thoughtfully planned. All enjoy a dual aspect, with kitchens overlooking the galleries, and bedrooms and living rooms facing the street. Bay windows add visual and experiential variety and riff on the area’s Victorian predecessors. There are 11 wheelchair-accessible flats and two studio units for research assistants and students, who, as part of a post‑occupancy initiative co‑ordinated by St Saviour’s, monitor aspects of the residents’ wellbeing and nutrition, to explore the broader relationship between environment and health. Historically a redoubt of docks, factories and tanneries, Bermondsey has been fitfully transformed by post‑industrial gentrification. Yet in the early 20th century, it had a surprisingly progressive approach to public health, as social historian Ken Worpole, who worked with WWM on the project, points out. In the 1920s, local Labour councillors Ada and Alfred Salter introduced measures to reduce poverty, improve housing, expand the school medical service, and create new parks and swimming pools, all under the auspices of the Beautification Department’s motto ‘Prevention is better than cure’. The idea that by improving living conditions, in tandem with wider civic and social provision, health outcomes will also be improved is not new, but in the current era it struggles to gain traction when set against the UK’s increasingly polarised and pressurised housing, health and social care systems.  ‘Appleby Blue is a retort to the all‑too‑prevalent notion that older people should be shunted to the urban and sociocultural margins’ ‘The scale of public funds required to underwrite long‑term care is so enormous that new ways of thinking are essential,’ notes Worpole. Today, social care accounts for 65 per cent of UK local authority budgets, up from 57 per cent since 2014, leaving scant resources for anything else, including preventative measures. This precipitates a vicious cycle as without early interventions, elderly people become unwell more quickly, thereby requiring more intensive and expensive care in the long run. Clearly, in the area of prevention, the form and quality of housing can play a significant role. ‘In trying to find ways to mitigate loneliness, we tried to increase opportunities for sociability by creating a kind of porosity,’ says Witherford. ‘It may be anecdotal, but other things, such as children coming in, personal health, communal activities, being taken outside your comfort zone and being part of a collective society, seem to have really helped a lot of people.’  For all its laudable intentions, Appleby Blue is still a drop in a vast ocean of need. And imaginative architecture can only do so much. But in suggesting different ways of doing things, it does provide an exemplar that has the potential to be replicated. And though it’s not all ‘rainbows and unicorns’, as Witherford puts it – some residents have issues around addiction, dementia and mental health – people seem to appreciate their surroundings and relish being part of the almshouse community. ‘On Saturday night, residents come down to the Garden Room with their wine’, says Witherford. ‘And one night, on the other side of the road, was a group of younger people who obviously had had too much to drink. They were looking across at the residents and there was a moment of mutual recognition.’ Resounding down the ages, the memento mori ‘as I am, so you shall be’, is a reminder of our fragile and finite mortal existence, and that ultimately, ageing is a mutual human experience to be confronted and even celebrated.