You can listen to Episode S2E10 right here!
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Hello, and welcome to the Third Age Design podcast, sharing essential information on senior environments. I’m Lori Pinkerton-Rolet. This month, we’re throwing our usual podcast format right out the proverbial window. We normally have a feature interview, and then a separate innovation spotlight segment that this month, our guests are both more than worthy of a feature. And this is a topic which is also a very important innovation. We’re going to be speaking to Judy Martin and Chris Straw about Sage Tours. So no, I’m not entering the ring as a travel agent here. This is ‘the’ in person realisation of what Third Age Design is also all about. We’re going to learn quite a bit from this Australian team.
Even though we’re architects, one of the things we do know about designing a retirement community or a seniors community, is it’s not just bricks and mortar. You’ve actually got to understand the operations side. You’ve got to understand the funding side, you’ve got to put it all together. ~ Chris Straw
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Keep listening for fascinating insights into senior living environments, which Judy and Chris have ‘put together’ as a result of these tours. I’m here to tell you Cicero was wrong. He says if you have a garden in the library, you have everything you need. And while these are certainly essential to the well-being of many people, the library is really likely to suffer from the weather, it would be like lending a book to me, they always come back from being read in a warm bath. And you don’t want to lend me any books. The point is, human beings since the dawn of time also require interior environments in order to assure our well-being. Do you know that from the 1500s to the 1800s, life expectancy was only between 30 to 40 years of age, let that sink in for a moment. The United Nations now believes that the average global life expectancy is around 72.6 years. So guess what…it’s hardly surprising that society is still learning exactly what older people need in order to stay active and healthy and supported in later years. And that is why Third Age Design exists to improve senior environments by sharing essential global information for the benefit of everyone. Just go to thirdage.design, and tap on the Join Us button and when you do, you’ll automatically receive our quarterly ‘A TAD Extra’, exclusive information for our members and there’s no cost to join. The Third Age Design podcast is supported by Innova Care Concepts whose mission is to enhance quality of life through innovation. From hydrotherapy pools to furniture, you’ll find quality, aesthetics and functionality in all unique Innova products. Innova Care Concepts, the leading edge of health care. Okay, let’s get started. By way of introduction, we have two guests today. So ladies first, Judy Martin began her career as a registered nurse followed by additional training in business development, client services, and management and staff development and agent and health care education. She successfully opened a number of international seniors living markets, liaising with government departments, Australian Government, overseas trade offices, and key stakeholders. She’s worked with ThomsonAdsett for six years as national and international Business Development Manager for the health and seniors living markets. And she has been responsible for client interface and user group coordination and planning on the clinical aspects of design. Now important to this interview, is her management as lead of the Sage Study Tour programme for over a decade, visiting and studying over 300 facilities and organisations around the world. Our second guest is Chris Straw, consulting partner and architect with ThomsonAdsett with a special interest in the senior living design sector and who until recently was Managing Director. His focus is emerging trends and the cultural and market shifts which shaped the sector. He’s been consulting on international projects in Saudi, England, Thailand, China and New Zealand, focusing on dementia design as part of large scale seniors communities. So my challenge in interviewing both of our experts today is to try to keep the podcast under four hours! Welcome.
Chris Straw
Good morning from Australia.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
So I’m going to start with you if I may, Judy. It’s my understanding that you actually initiated the Sage Tours concept? Did I get that right?
Judy Martin
You did Lori, I was working with a the ThomsonAddsett, one of Australia’s preeminent architect companies within the seniors living or aged care and health space at the time. My background, as you mentioned in the introduction is nursing. So I’ve worked in the health field for about 20 years on a number of both clinical engagements. And then then in management, and I had been in Malaysia, when I was first introduced to ThomsonAdsett, we were over there on a diplomatic posting with my husband. And I ran into ThomsonAdsett or a member of ThomsonAdsett staff, and at the time, they were doing a very large hospital project. So I started to work alongside with them and consult with them doing their user group meetings and bringing that health expertise to their design. And this was back in the days where health planners and that clinical interface wasn’t a big deal. It was the late 90s or mid 90s. So then we came back to Australia, and I continued my engagement with ThomsonAdsett. Chris was there as one of the senior partners at the time. And we, one of his partners, a gentleman called David Lane. And I said to them, I’ve got a marketing idea, but I don’t want it to be marketing, I want it to be thought leadership. But if you back me almost in presenting this idea to the Australian industry, I’ll do it. But I don’t ever want it to be a commercially focused marketing activity, I want to put us at the forefront. And I believe the marketing and client engagement will come out of that we you know, there will be clients who were interested in what we were doing, what we are doing, but it’s to also keep us at the head and be the leading, or the thought leaders for Australian design companies on what was happening. So that’s how it started, it was almost done. If you use expression, you know, on the back of a cigarette packet back in those days formulating the plan and the idea, David and Chris and another gentleman were very keen to pursue the idea. I don’t think they knew me well enough, then that they didn’t expect that within six weeks, we’d have our first tour planned and we’re off to China.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
The idea of thought leadership is just such a beautiful way of putting it because the whole reason for the podcast even existing is that we see a vacuum of where do you get this information? I mean, unless you can read in a lot of different languages, because so much of the context of the sector takes place in sort of periodicals in some sort of magazine or online magazine or printed. So the idea of being able to share and learn and put yourself in that position of being a thought leader is really very groundbreaking. And you did this, what was the year the first time.
Judy Martin
2006 was the first stage. And I said I think I’ve still got the little piece of paper where we were coming up with what we would call Sage, which actually means studying and advancing global elder care.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Yes. And Chris, you started as a senior partner, were you Managing Director at the time?
Chris Straw
What now that I was the senior partner at that time I didn’t take over as Managing Director till about to 2010 I suppose one of the other main, main unique things about this study tour programme or the business model, is we actually partnered with the key peak bodies within Australia as well, they were our partners. So they were able to not mark it, but put forward the study tours as part of an industry initiative as well. And so it got a lot of authenticity as a result of its partnership with the peak bodies within Australia as well.
Judy Martin
That’s like your equivalent of the National Care Forum or Care England, or ARCO, your association, climate communities. So it was those equivalence, which now they’re all very good colleagues of ours because of this reason. Yeah. So it was our equivalent of those organisations.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
And when you’re putting the tours together, I noticed on your website that people can write in and say, you know, why don’t you go to this place? But let’s say you’ve chosen a country, how do you actually decide how many sites you’re going to go to? And how do you put those tours together? What sort of research do you need to do up front? Or do you already have all the contacts?
Judy Martin
No, now we do back in 2006 we didn’t we’re very well developed. Now. I have since just finished my role as chair of the Global Ageing Network, which again is the peak Association globally. And there’s an equivalent in Europe the European Association of Ageing, but back then no, we had to do a lot of research. But that has evolved now where we use our peak associations in the countries that we’re visiting. So is our point, we try and collaborate with them as much as possible. So we’d say to them of your members who were doing innovative practice or something that you’d want to take to the global stage. So to start with, there was a lot of internet research and research not knowing really, what, where to go. So we had to look and think, Well, you say on your website, you’re very innovative. But is that actually effective marketing. But now it’s very easy, because we’ve established so many global relationships, and Sage has become a very trusted brand. I’m quite known now, myself, because I’ve run those tours over the 17 years. So people are familiar with the branding that brings itself. The other thing is we started to evolve. Initially, we were going to look at design for being an architect company that then evolved to say, well, there are lots of other things we can look at, we can start to theme, our approach. So we would look at we would call it an IT study to another, you can’t just go around the country looking at IT, but we tried them to pick organisations that their associations will say, well, these organisations are thought leaders in technology or these associations are thought leaders in home care, we try and still bring the cohesive, integrated package, which is homecare seniors living, aged care, or health to a tour but we have a particular focus on one of those themes.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
So it might be operations could be facilities, it might be it, as you said. So I’m just curious, you’re coming later this month in October of 2022 to the UK again, what’s the focus on that particular tour?
Judy Martin
Well, it was a postponed tour from 219. So at the time, it was integrated communities more looking at those communities. The Chocolate Factory in Bristol, we’re going to very well-known integrated seniors community, I think, what will actually happen, it will become a COVID- Survival, futuristic, how did you go? Where are you, I think the messages that will come out of that are lessons learned from COVID for the seniors living industry that we’re all very heavily involved in. But when this tour was set, two years ago, it was to be looking at senior integrated communities and the evolution of homecare into aged care facilities or retirement villages, which I think the message in the UK is very similar to Australia as it is in a lot of countries. And that is that they used to be very siloed services, whereas now the innovation is the integration of all those silos.
Chris Straw
Be fair to say, if even though we’re architects, one of the things we do know about designing a retirement community or a senior’s community, is it’s not just bricks and mortar, you’ve actually got to understand the operational side, you’ve got to understand the funding side, you’ve got to put it all together. And a lot of what we’re focused on, even though we may have branded it a particular type of tour, we were still looking at a total solution, in running through it, where the where the design was only a component of it to be able to make sense to the client in the end.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
But it needs to be supported by all that other information, otherwise, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Chris Straw
Absolutely, yes.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
So do you find the operators generally supportive when you come to them and say, we’re going to do this tour? What sort of things do they say that they want to know before they let you through the doors?
Judy Martin
I think, as I said, because Sage has evolved over 17 years, and the branding has become quite well known through the association’s that has become a lot easier. So when we approach the National Care Forum or Care England or so we’d like to see some of your members. A lot of that background is done for us by the associates dealing with their own members. A lot of times it’s not we write directly to the associations that we have. It’s far more cohesive in our approach now. So that is, if I had to say what’s the model or framework behind preparing them it is that using the association, and I think that also gives both the country we visiting and the physic being the visitors from Australia, a room and an outlet for publications and research papers afterwards after the visit. So that collaboration and partnership, they can then be an article in the National Care Forums Member newsletter, they hosted a group of Australians. Having said that we have taken groups where we’ve had Commonwealth countries because I was also on the board. And as was Chris on the Commonwealth Association of Ageing, which we were founding directors of, when we that started a few years ago, so we did one trip where we had a New Zealand, Canadian, Australian component on a tour or a programme. So it’s not just Australians, although that is, well, Australians got a reputation for travelling, you know, we up and going. We’ve tried to promote other companies coming back to Australia, but we are a long distance to come. Whereas when we go to Europe or the UK, there is that option that people can align their holidays to it, and then go off and have a European holiday in Australia. It’s a long way. And I guess the propensity to travel is not as enthusiastically or energetically done as Australians going out of our country. This is pre-COVID. Also, we very clearly made a point that we wanted to keep the programmes targeted to decision makers, CEO, CFO, board member level, at that very high level. So again, when your question was, how are we received, we put together bios and a little package of why we coming, what we’re looking for, and who are on the programme. So when an organisation is approached, they can see the level of seniority. That’s not to say there’s not a place for more middle managers to do these tours. But our focus was the definitely the executive level.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Why was that decision taken? Was it to inform the market? You said you were stepping back from having it as a direct marketing thing? Was that part of the overall vision?
Judy Martin
Yes, it was. Because if we were going to be thought leaders, it is the executives of an organisation that is driving the model that that organisation decides they want to implement. So if we wanted the decision makers, we had two, a lot more, but two I can remember clearly, where the CEO was on the bus sitting at the back of the bus and changed their whole design rang Australia and said, stop work.
Chris Straw
I’ve already designed two facilities at the back of a bus. And these are after they’ve been documented, because I saw models of care that made sense.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
So I’m sure your team loved you when you came back with that one.
Chris Straw
Well, I’m not anyone looking in the eye no.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
So you’ve been doing this for a long time. Now. I want to know if you’ve seen innovations in one place, and then discovered that something similar has evolved in another country, but perhaps in a different way to match the culture of that country. Have you seen any examples like that?
Chris Straw
Sometimes government policy, that makes a huge difference in terms of how things are funded, and, and how the end result goes. We’ve also seen things that we wouldn’t do as well. And seeing things or wouldn’t do is just as important as seeing things you wouldn’t do. Because you need to understand that as well. Judy and I were invited a few years ago to speak at the fledgling Aged Care Association in St. Petersburg, in Russia. They were just starting up their organisation at that stage. And so we spent a day speaking to this group, and then they took us around to their facilities. Now the facilities we saw, they are not things that we would do, but we would understand how they did it. There was one where they tried to retro-fit a large three storey house, there was another one which was the world’s biggest psychiatric hospital. And we kept looking around and seeing nine nurses following us then, sort of in white uniforms. And then we’ll taken out to the Black Sea, and then into a forest, kind of a forest stage at which we were how we and this oligarch over there, develop these two huge three story buildings for his wife, who wanted to actually develop a care programme. They had no operational understanding of what they do, but he put money in it and that was so remote. And so we understood why they did things but we wouldn’t do those things and so learning why people on projects that you wouldn’t do is sometimes really important as well.
Judy Martin
Having said that, but the thing is living out in the middle of the Black Forest was there was, it wanted for nothing being that we could have afforded to put into a development, but it was empty. And we said to them, who’s going to come here and they said, they’ll come, eventually they’ll come. So had been built. It was magnificent. But it wasn’t done on any sort of plan to get people it was just we have this magnificent facility. I’ll eventually come and fill it up, I’d love to go back one day and see if they ever did. The other side of that is we went to South Africa. That was one of our another, which are all magnificent trips. But the South Africa one was particularly interesting, because one morning, we were in an area were under the mountain down in Cape Town in a magnificent seven-star facility. And we’d gone there to look at their quality system, though we’re using the RIA quality system. In the afternoon, we were in a ghetto community that didn’t have you know, medication, had no water, they have water once a week. So the dichotomy of what we were seeing there, but the place in the afternoon, we probably saw more care there than I’ve seen in some of the most magnificent places everyone was singing. The residents were staffed with, they’re doing massages, hand massages, and singing with the clients, and physiotherapy in a way that they, I don’t think it was labelled or branded physiotherapy. But the exercise programmes were happening. And that was probably one of my most beautiful trips that we’ve done, we went way out in the Drakensberg mountains at the back of Durban, to a place that had nothing, to a little aged care facility out there run by Nun, and I’ve never seen higher levels of care and home care. In all the years I’ve been travelling. So it doesn’t necessarily be the built form. It’s what the model around the care provision is.
Chris Straw
One of the real benefits of South Africa as well as that we provided very strong linkages between Australian providers and the South African providers. And they were sending staff over, they were sending the equipment over. So there was this linkage programme that actually was provided as well. So it wasn’t something we focused on. But it happened as a result of us being over there and looking those things together.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Right. So it organically grew out of that. If we can look at a couple of other countries, are there any surprise learnings that really impressed you the most let’s start with a big country, the United States, what have you seen in the US that really impressed you and you thought, wow, this is an interesting direction.
Chris Straw
From a design point of view, I’ve actually put four sort of things I saw the first one was scale. Over there, some of the facilities we saw over there, they have large number of people there. And so it was how they dealt with that. In the social grouping situation there, the Erickson one at Riderwood, Maryland, they’ve got two and a half thousand people on site. And so the way they dealt with that was that they created villages of 500, and one of the villages was a an assisted living in skilled nursing village, the rest were all sort of seniors living villages on that. And so the way they actually then broke up and structured, the site became really important there as well. They’ve also embedded a really active healthcare system They employed, I think it was six doctors on staff. And they were very proactive in the way that they actually provided health services to, to all of the people living there on site to a point that they actually reduce the hospital stay days by doing that and got a rebate from the Medicaid system. So the programme over there worked really well in terms of that as well. So scale was one of the things that we took back, we, we don’t do them as big over here. But it’s really interesting to understand how they, how they do it, and how they develop that.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
So basically, they’re getting economies of scale. But then these are presumably built as campuses, basically an entire town full of people. I mean, there are towns that are built here in the UK, and they’re actually smaller than that number of people.
Chris Straw
It’s managing large number of people. And you can actually then relate that back even to smaller numbers in terms of the social structuring that you might have within a facility as well. And that was comes a premise for how you design these things as well. And you’ve then got to relate that back to staffing models and things as well. Yeah. And that’s where duty is to always look over our plans to then analyse how you how you would staff and manage these facilities as well as the first tap. Yeah. So scale became one of them. The other one was the advent of the virtual community over there. We went to Beacon Hill, I remember that in Boston. And that was America’s first virtual community over there. By the time that we went back, I think they’d had 100 on the go around the place. And then understanding the model of the virtual community, creating a hub, having a menu of vetted services, and then creating socialisation programmes. And these were run by local communities and initiated by local communities. So this adventure, virtual communities became really interesting. Yeah, don’t you think Judy?
Judy Martin
I do. And the other the other standout, I guess, in evolution of practice was the Netherlands has stood out for me when we first went there in 2007. I think there were 10 care farms in the country, there are now over 1000. Yeah, so that that’s one that a phenomenal change or approach, and this Care Farm approach, little hobby farms that have been turned into day respite, but magnificent concept, but the growth of that in the time period over say, 10 to 12 year period, to see that in a small country like the Netherlands, that, but also that real social approach that that has in the Scandinavian countries. What also always impressed us was the political background that they’d come from where they paid taxes or their life at a much higher level than Australia pays to have education and social care, looked after your whole life. So that always impressed us that there was the money to spend there. But also we were saying, Oh, we could never have this in Australia, because we the taxes were always paid to have that provision of social approach. So the politics, and that really drove what their countries everyone says our Scandinavian countries are so innovative. Yes, they are. But they also have that political imperative and funding behind them that a lot of countries don’t.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
So do you find that as a result of that funding, the quality of the facilities itself is enhanced, where there’s more money physically going into the project?
Judy Martin
Absolutely.
Chris Straw
Yes, the other issue over there is there was less retirement communities over there. And the reason for that is that because they have a lot more homecare, people actually almost went directly from home to a pro launch facility. And there was a high care. And there was, there was less of the product in the middle that we would call retirement villages over there. And so the government funding, and that created that as a as a situation over there, which was really interesting. And therefore, as a result of it, they did have issues of loneliness, of people being at home by themselves and not connecting. And that was that’s one of the advantages of retirement community sometimes. So there’s pros and cons.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Yes, we have a really big issue with that in the UK with the whole loneliness issue.
Judy Martin
Well, you’ve got your minister for your minister for loneliness now, which is something we’ve learned from our trips. So we come back to Australia, and we talk about and take that to our ministerial meetings that the UK have actually implemented a Minister for Loneliness. So that’s, that’s a really good example. And one that stands out of one of our trips, was finding the UK is implementation of that Minister for Loneliness.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
What have you discovered out of Japan? Because I mean, it’s such a different culture. I visited some homes there myself, and I found quite a number of differences. Were there any things that impressed you about the model or the way that they’re building facilities to support that model?
Chris Straw
I would suggest technology was the big thing, wasn’t it, there Judy?
Judy Martin
Yeah, absolutely. But not so much the technology but their acceptance of technology, but I’d like to take that a step further. They didn’t have technology for technology’s sake. They’re a country that has embraced technology very early. So they didn’t find it as a one-off solution. What really impressed or stood out when we went there in the use of technologies. They were very clear, and this is every place we and we’ve done four trips to Japan. Everywhere we went, they said solution technology is not the answer. Technology is the assistance that can allow what they call warm hands to continue to provide the care and technology can be the solution for the other things. So they were they weren’t just with a technology country. And so we’re going to have walking, talking robots for everything. What they were very clear that their approach was they didn’t want robots replacing the care component, the warm hands component, they wanted technology, doing the HR and the financing and the meeting and greeting at a door to instead of having someone there to show you where your resident was, it was a technology process to go and find where your family member was. But when you got there, there would be staff there actually doing warm hands, hands on caring. So we were very impressed, always at that. Also, I think Japan, their long term care insurance, they have taken that approach many, many years before a lot of other countries could, that there was an insurance policy and insurance, again, political imperative for long term care. So you’re just like every other insurance that we pay, it was a risk, but you choose to pay it and then you’ll end up with the care should something happened and you need it just like the rest of our medical insurance or health insurance or…
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
And of course, their demographics are changing a little bit sooner than the rest of us. So absolutely. In terms of how you’re providing a high level of service with a fewer people, what you’re saying is that they’re putting the lack of people into technology. On the management side, if you will.
Judy Martin
You know, they’re obviously a country that was far more rapidly able to embrace technology a lot of years before the rest of us did. That we didn’t complicate it as much as we were all quite, I think, technology. 10 years ago, it was still a bit boo. Japan embraced it far earlier than the rest a lot of other countries.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Chris, were there any specific buildings that you saw on any of the tours that you’ve been engaged with where you thought, wow, this is cutting edge and really needs to be replicated or talked about because it’s offering something quite new and different?
Chris Straw
Well, there was an interesting one in San Francisco. And in fact, it wasn’t a new building. There’s an old building there, which was a six storey renovated building called Bethany. And it was one that actually introduced, say, a very active arts programme. In it, the whole ground floor was given over to gallery space. It was curated via an artist in that and they would turn that over every, every three months. And they that would bring the community connect component connecting the broader community. On the outside of the building, it was a huge mural. And people would come from far and wide to be able to see the mural. So the building itself reflected the use of what it was all about. It was all about artists, and they had a very famous artists called Ruth Asawa, who was who actually provided tapestries and things in the entry area there as well. And in fact, the model there attracted all the artists, and in fact, the building itself attract the type of people that that it was designed for. And so what we’ve found is that we’ve taken that and embed embedded very strong narratives in buildings here in Australia, we’ve done one associated with Melbourne University, for ex-professors, we had 9x Professors living at one stage, we did one on the banks of the Erradown here. We’re all about the artists colonies and things there. So what we’ve tried to do was actually create these boutique facilities with strong narratives to create like-minded people that come and live within facilities and so it’s, it was more than just the building that attracted us it was that total solution again.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Right, so the link wasn’t the fact that you’re a certain age and might need a little support the link was the things in your life you’re interested in. That’s fascinating. Yeah.
Chris Straw
It helps commercially as well. It helps with sales rates, the cohesiveness, creating sense of community within these places, because they’re like minded people. Yeah, the issue that I have, and just outside of Boston, we went to Lasell University on the Lasell College over and, and that that concept of UBRC, and we’ve been exploring that for quite a while and knowing that to get in there you need to actually sign up for 300 hours of additional education a year, and they created their own educational programmes, they embedded their own classrooms, they created strong relationships with the kids who are going to college over there as well. And so it’s almost this grand parenting programme. Yeah.
Judy Martin
And I think that was really interesting out of that one out of Lasell. So Chris and Lori, you would know of the university based retirement communities. But the interesting thing was that when we first went there, the director of Lasell College was actually a clinician, she, I think she was an ex-Director of Nursing. When we went back six years later, the Director was from an education background. So we found that really interesting that the CEO for want of a better title, in a different title in different languages, but the CEO had gone from a health-based person to an education background person. So I always found that very interesting.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
So some of the themes which are coming out here are uniqueness of a facility or user group that was particularly impressive to you. There were economies of scale using various technologies, perhaps in a new way. If you were to say the one thing you were most excited about in all of the years, it Well, I suppose that’s an impossible question. It’s like saying, What’s your favourite child? But if each of you were to say what your favourite location was that you visited, and what you learned from it, I’d be very curious. I’ve been to some places, but for example, you talked about Lasell. We’ve mentioned that on the podcast, but I’ve never been in person. So I’m really interested in your personal take on your favourite locations.
Judy Martin
Judy, you want to go first? Yeah, I have to and I get asked this all the time, because we have been to, you know, as I said, I’ve been to well over 400. The two that urban, sorry, remote village in South Africa, where there was nothing, 300 kilometres from the nearest town that had nothing, that care can be given in any capacity. If you have people who care. I’ve never forgotten that village or that aged care facility. So that is at one end of the spectrum. The other end is Msemi. Yes, over in the Drakensberg mountains in Rorke’s Drift, which is remote, remote area out, you know, so 300 kilometres from Durban, the nearest shop was probably 200 kilometres, we’ve maintained a relationship with that place, but that to me was care is not a building or it is the people. On the other end of the spectrum, the one that I have loved the most, and we go to every time we come to the UK is the Chocolate Factory, with St. Monica Trust, I think, David the CEO there, it was a brilliant innovator. He was talking about that we went there. I think I’ve been there five times now. And the first time it was plans. The next time they had one building the next time they had two buildings, but what they’d done was changed the second building into office blocks…so how that had evolved. The third and fourth time were how that whole read gentrification of the area where they put the chocolate quarter had changed that area of Bristol, in its employment, there was now the school down the road, there was the soccer field. So that one to me has always been a stand out of the planning and vision. And then how they integrated that services. But how they built the restaurant really then invited, turned their second block into office blocks, which then brought the staff from that over to the restaurant, which then made the memberships of the health club and gym. But the different times we’ve gone we’ve seen the evolution of the change of plans, what it was originally intended. So we’re going back there again. You know, I think the innovation, the building, what they’ve done and how they bought that community into their story, how they’ve grown that community. So they’re mighty standouts in all those years and all those places having said that, you know, they are, I don’t think I’ve ever been to one that I’ve walked out and said that was dreadful.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Wow. So you’ve done your homework really well and the groups that you’re working with in each country. What about you, Chris, what are your standouts?
Chris Straw
I’d go back to the States and I just outside of Boston, we went to America’s first urban greenhouse building, which was called Leonard Florence. The greenhouses of course, a movement that came out of Eden over there, which is a small house model of a 10 bedroom structured house. This one he was six storey building on each one of the on the ground floor was a community offer. The next five levels up were two 10 bedroom houses. So it was 100 beds within the structure there. What was interesting there is the design of the greenhouse to this group, I’m really interested in dementia design. But the young guy who showed us through it was a young 40 year old architect who had ALS, they call it Lou Gehrig’s syndrome over there. And he could only speak to us through navel gaze technology. And he actually helped with the design of it over there. And he, we took us through and he spoke to us about it. Interestingly, only seven of those houses we use for older people, three of the houses we use for younger disabled people. So what that showed to me is the flexibility of designing a set of bones that can change over time, and validated small house. And we’ve taken a lot of the learnings from that, especially in the dementia villages that we’ve designed around the place now as well. And so that’s that was a standout for me, but more from a design perspective and a flexibility perspective and a product that can change over time and live in the future.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
But you’re still having economies of scale across your vertical building. Yeah. Correct. Which presumably involves the age old problem from around the world, which is storage?
Chris Straw
Yes, yeah, we never have enough.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
So that’s not unique to the UK or Australia. It happens every place. If listeners would like to get involved, and you’d like some people from other countries to join the tours…h How would they go about that, Judy?
Judy Martin
I think the first thing is, whether it’s my email, you can go to the Sage, but dialogue. Study Tours is a company we partner with based out of France, who run a lot of intercontinental or inter-Europe tours, that we partner with them. So Sage is now part of the Global Ageing Network. They’re running tours through the Global Ageing Network. So there’s a myriad of ways… in the UK caring one National Care Forum and ARCO are all very aware of Sage. So that would be my first for an English audience or a United Kingdom audience. Go to your peak Associations who are aware of the Sage programme. And we’re Global Ageing Network is definitely the website you’d go to as well. Yeah, we do. Leading age is our office, the Global Ageing Network offices based in the leading age, America office or USA office. So and Lori, contact you and you just flip them over to us and we can let them know what’s going on.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Yeah, we will do. And on the podcast page for this episode, we’ll have all sorts of links shown. And also at the website at Third Age dot design as well. It’s been such a thrill to talk to people that are as passionate about this topic and the difference that learning from one another can make, because that’s why we’re here also. So it’s really been a pleasure to speak to both of you. Thank you so much.
Judy Martin
It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Lori Pinkerton-Rolet
Just a quick look then at our TAD international events calendar. The ICAA Conference Leadership Summit and Expo is in Orlando, Florida, USA, from the eighth to the 10th of November. If you’re going please do check out the name tags and say hello because I’ll be there too. The future of ageing 2022 conference will take place at the Wellcom collection in London, England on November the 24th. And the Big Sight Hall in Tokyo, Japan will be the site of the care show from February 8 to the 10th. Don’t you love that name the Big Sight Hall, l I think it’s great. You’ll find more listings on the event page at www Third Age Dot Design. And let us know via the contact page if you have an event you’d like us to list there. Next month’s podcast will feature the extraordinary work of Dr. Christopher Johnson of Texas State University in the US. Join us to find out why Dementia is ‘a trip back in time’ and how the built environment might respond to this concept. Thank you to today’s special guests Chris Straw and Judy Martin of Sage Tours and ThompsonAdsett. To our handsome producer Mike Scales. To Valerie Adler of The Right Website, to Peter Thorne, who composed our theme music and is playing the piano with Mary Blanchard on the flute and to our sponsor Innova Care Concepts…the leading edge of healthcare. Finally, to you. Thank you for being part of a community who believes we can improve senior environments together. I’m Lori Pinkerton-Rolet hope you’ll join me for the next one!