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 Amy Wagenfeld had to say.
Occupational therapist
Amy Wagenfeld, PhD, OTR/L, SCEM
Assistant professor, department of occupational therapy, Rush University (Chicago)
As an occupational therapist, I’m a member of the American Occupational Therapy Association and represent the organization in my involvement with SAGE. Occupational therapists are trained to understand the necessity of good fit between a person and the environment and have the ability to use environments in ways conducive to helping people do what’s important to them.
We help people achieve this fit by adapting, modifying, and designing spaces that are most usable for all. Our skills in understanding how to make the complex and transactional relationship between helping people do what they want and need to do in environments that support them helps us in partnering with architects, designers, builders, and developers to create and program healthcare spaces.
As part of the EFA Design Showcase jury, I was most supportive of projects that clearly demonstrated residents as the first priority. I looked for evidence of universal design features; for me, accessibility isn’t enough. Features that I appreciated included ample spaces for wheelchairs to sit alongside standard seating; carpeting that wouldn’t pose a trip or fall hazard for residents with visual, perceptual, and balance challenges; zero-threshold showers; storage spaces that were equally usable from sitting or standing positions; lighting that didn’t produce glare; kitchens that provided equitable spaces for residents to sit and to stand while cooking or hanging out; outdoor spaces with pathways wide enough to accommodate two wheelchairs in tandem, to name a few.
I was drawn to projects that had clearly demarcated spaces that would be conducive for residents/families to engage in purposeful activity, as a sense of meaning can be lost in the transition from home to a senior living facility. I also looked for clear and deliberate connections between indoor and outdoor spaces, as evidence-based research points to positive health outcomes associated with access to nature, even if just views through a window.
Projects that concerned me were those that lacked a collaborative design approach. For instance, a therapy clinic (within a senior living facility) lacking an accessible training kitchen is, in my mind, a missed opportunity for the design team to have worked closely with an occupational therapist, who would have guided the team through creating, at minimum, a universally accessible kitchen.
Worlds are aligning and great things are happening in supporting best practice in design and programming of gerontological environments. I can’t wait for next year.
