Retirement Home in Krapina - Zagorje, Croatia

Sammanfattning: Population decline in rural areas is observed in almost every European country. In Croatia, there are no meaningful strategies to mitigate the consequences of depopulation. As a result, many rural communities have already disappeared, while more are becoming unsustainable. Krapina-Zagorje is a region severely impacted by the shrinking and aging of its population. This thesis approaches depopulation from an architectural viewpoint. The retirement home typology is leveraged to address senior care needs while improving the long-term sustainability of rural communities. To design a realistic and economical retirement home, the legal framework in Croatia was investigated. Along with this, several reference projects have been examined, demonstrating the development of retirement homes in the last 70 years. To integrate the design proposal into the local context and to make use of the qualities of existing rural patterns, a detailed survey of the region was carried out in search of good building sites. During early planning, the chosen site and its surroundings were taken as a starting point. A retirement home for 60 residents was deemed appropriate given the site's dimensions. The home's common areas were expanded to service the senior residents of the surrounding village, integrating it into the existing community. The retirement home as a typology was found to have great potential to act towards revitalisation of rural areas, which was demonstrated in the design proposal. However, for this potential to materialize in other projects, a committed and meaningful architectural interaction with the building's wider context is always necessary.