A 23-member jury of industry professionals, including architects, interior designers, providers, consultants, and researchers, was charged with sifting through the 59 projects submitted to this year’s Environments for Aging (EFA) Design Showcase, determining which ones made the cut to be published and which ones rose to the top and earned awards. Most importantly, they offered their unique perspectives. It’s a multidisciplinary approach that adds dimension to the judging process and provides the opportunity to recognize projects’ merits in a much richer way.
So we asked them how they approached this task from their individual spots within senior living design and what they took away from the work they reviewed. Here's what juror Rafi Wartan had to say.
Engineer
Rafi Wartan, PE, LEED AP BD+C
Principal/division director, TLC Engineering for Architecture (Jacksonville, Fla.)
As a first-time judge, it was very important to me to understand the criteria that Environments for Aging gave to the submitting parties and to judge the submitted projects strictly on those criteria, which consist of innovation, community collaboration, aesthetics, and operational performance.
It was indeed an honor to be included with the great group of judges, which consisted of architects, interior designers, owners, therapists, and a host of others, each bringing a unique perspective to the process, and all were open to the views of the others.
As an engineer, I viewed the innovation and operational performance criteria of the program as an opportunity for projects to showcase their process and final selection of the overall design, and more specifically, the systems used or at least considered.
A number of the submitted projects did just that. It was obvious that the benefit of daylighting is being recognized, as a number of the projects were harnessing daylighting in their design. Some of the projects did a great job in marrying natural daylight with illumination from electrical fixtures. Reading about projects that evaluated engineering innovations, such as geothermal solutions, was also very impressive. We also came across projects that are pursuing LEED certification, which showed the importance of operational performance and sustainability.
