Elderly Care Skärvet

The elderly care is a part of the Skärvet city block, which is a starting point of Bäckaslöv, a new urban district in Växjö being developed along the railway and connecting the city centre to the lake Norra Bergundasjön. The L- shaped building is the first phase and the cornerstone of the new city block, offering mixed forms of tenure around a spacious, shared courtyard.

The design and configuration are strongly linked to the construction process. The variation in the façade is rationally achieved by seemingly using more joints than façade elements and by combining four sections with different tile patterns. The overall design thus resembles a textile pattern or a crocheted table cloth. The layout organisation is based on arranging all common and neutral areas into a central hub with individual departments located in each respective wing. Common functions comprise an assembly hall, a conservatory, physiotherapy facility and a greenhouse on the rooftop with a view over the shared courtyard and the green recreational space. The core of each department is its dining and living room, an open space extending from façade to façade. Its large windows and tall ceiling heights provide great daylight conditions.

Loadbearing prefab concrete facades and few loadbearing inner walls, in combination with a relatively high floor height, make the building a flexible structure that could house other functions in an unforeseeable future. Graphical patterns are repeated throughout the façades, where tiles are cast into prefab elements in order to emulate a textile pattern. Entrances, windows and roofs are accentuated by copper-coloured metal details, adding warmer tones to the overall composition and on ground floor announcing the main entrance. The building is designed to achieve LEED Platinum certificate and Skanska’s top-level environmental classification.