Residents’ tastes for the finer things in life don’t go away once they move into a CCRC, skilled nursing facility, or small house setting. In fact, today’s seniors are putting an ever-expanding list of requests on the table, especially when it comes to dining.
“A menu of traditional and predictable fare served in a banquet hall-style dining room is quickly becoming a thing of the past,” says Gregg Scott, partner, RLPS Architects (Lancaster, Pa.).
That shift played a big role in the Award of Merit wins for completed projects Garden Spot Village (New Holland, Pa.) and Cottages at Hearthstone (Pella, Iowa). The EFA Design Showcase jury made particular note of the communities’ contemporary dining spaces that didn’t skimp on aesthetics or attention to detail.
When Garden Spot Village began a renovation of its CCRC, the first step was to reinvent the former Garden Cafe into an updated, open-concept restaurant (renamed The Harvest Table) with a choice of seating options as well as fare.
The design team had to work within the existing infrastructure, including disproportionately low ceiling heights in the food area. The solution was to remove the drop ceiling and expose the overhead utilities to give the illusion of volume. Then a concept of “positive and negative space” was introduced by adding white, curvilinear, acoustical ceiling clouds above key areas and painting the visible ductwork and conduits black to allow them to visually disappear into the background.
The sense of openness was maintained by bringing back-of-house food stations out into the dining area and using airy corn-crib inspired shelving as dividers in the seating sections.
The exposed ceiling components also complement the new “light industrial” design aesthetic, which includes decorative tile, aged brick, weathered wood, and colorfully filled canning jars. Jury members appreciated these touches, with one juror adding, “The of-the-moment, light industrial style is very appealing to a multigenerational clientele.”
Planning of the 84,000-square-foot Cottages at Hearthstone set a specific challenge before the design team at Pope Architects (St. Paul, Minn.): Create an open-concept kitchen where full meals could be prepared in each of the community’s five small-home cottages—with codes for a skilled nursing facility still met.
“It’s a challenge to meet requirements for food service preparation and fire protection for an open kitchen in a senior care environment,” says Jill Schroeder, senior interior designer at Pope Architects.
One of the keys to achieving this goal was applying for a waiver from the state for the project to be reviewed under the 2012 NFPA Life Safety Code, which would allow the kitchen to look more residential and open to the rest of the cottage.
Further measures were taken to provide safety and minimize the feel of an institutional kitchen, including the use of ventilation hoods, wall and warming ovens, and a cook top.
The open, residential setting also offers a pantry, ample counter and storage space, and a long table in place of a lower fixed counter for flexibility. “Preparing meals directly in each cottage area has encouraged residents to get involved in mealtime,” Schroeder says.
Anne DiNardo is senior editor of Environments For Aging. She can be reached at [email protected].
For more on this year's EFA Showcase, read “Senior Living Design Is Homeward Bound.”
