Alessandro Caruso Architecture & Interiors (ACA) has earned national recognition for its work on Langtree Care Home in Standish, with the project shortlisted for New Build Project of the Year at the 2026 Healthcare Estates Awards.
Designed for Millennium Care Group, Langtree Care Home has been selected alongside some of the healthcare estates sector’s leading projects. The awards recognise achievement and innovation across healthcare design, construction, estates and facilities management.
The result will be revealed at the Healthcare Estates Awards Dinner, taking place at Manchester’s Kimpton Clocktower Hotel on 13 October 2026.
For ACA, the shortlisting recognises more than the completion of a new building. It reflects the practice’s commitment to designing care environments around the lives, needs and everyday experiences of their residents.
A care home is fundamentally different from a clinical building that people enter for an appointment or a limited period of treatment. It becomes a person’s home and the setting for their daily routines, relationships and memories.
ACA approached Langtree with this distinction at the forefront of the design. The ambition was to replace an institutional atmosphere with a welcoming environment that promotes comfort, dignity, independence and belonging.
The architecture adopts a more domestic scale, with legible routes through the building and a considered mix of shared and private areas. Residents can take part in community life while maintaining the freedom to seek peace, privacy and personal space when they choose.
This balance is integral to ACA’s approach to care design: creating places that feel safe and homely for residents while also helping care teams work effectively.
The connection between the building and its surroundings is a defining aspect of Langtree.
In a long-term care setting, daylight, gardens and outdoor views are not simply visual enhancements. Residents experience them repeatedly as the light, weather and seasons change, allowing the landscape to become part of everyday life.
Accessible external areas can offer fresh air, gentle movement, opportunities to meet others and a continued connection with nature. By considering architecture and landscape together, the project supports a care community that feels more open, engaging and connected.
The same theme is influencing ACA’s wider exploration of how design can contribute to health and wellbeing across healthcare, care and age-friendly environments.
Langtree also demonstrates a principle found throughout ACA’s portfolio: the people who will live, work in and visit a building should shape the design from its earliest stages.
In practice, person-centred design reaches well beyond bedroom layouts and technical compliance. It requires an understanding of physical, sensory and emotional needs, as well as the different ways individuals may experience the same setting.
For a care home, this means asking practical human questions. Can residents understand where they are and move around with confidence? Are there natural opportunities to socialise? Can someone find privacy without becoming isolated? Do the interior spaces connect meaningfully with the outdoors? How does the atmosphere change throughout the day and can the building continue to support residents as their needs evolve?
By considering these experiences together, ACA aimed to create a setting that supports both quality of life and high-quality care.
The award recognition arrives as ACA continues to investigate the relationship between architecture, health, nature and human experience.
ACA Director Alessandro Caruso recently presented Langtree as an international case study during the International Symposium on Nature-Based Interventions & Public Health 2026, hosted by Harbin Institute of Technology in China.
His presentation examined how, within a care environment, architecture becomes closely connected to landscape, community, routine, memory and the passage of time. Because a care home is genuinely home, its design must consider the relationships linking residents, carers, families, individual rooms, gardens and shared spaces.
This work is informing Alessandro’s developing concept of Relational Architecture, which understands buildings not as static objects but as places shaped by an evolving network of people, experiences and environmental conditions.
The New Build Project of the Year shortlisting also celebrates the teamwork needed to translate an architectural vision into a completed care setting.
The award submission was made by Alessandro Caruso Architecture & Interiors Limited on behalf of the wider project team, which included:
ACA
ADS
Alessandro Caruso Architecture & Interiors
Arise Millennium
Millennium Care Group
Overford
P&DG
ACA has congratulated everyone involved and thanked Millennium Care Group and the full project team for the expertise and collaboration that supported Langtree’s successful delivery.
The practice will join fellow finalists and healthcare-sector colleagues in Manchester this October, when the winner of New Build Project of the Year 2026 will be announced.
