Rose Villa Senior Living, Portland, Oregon: EFA 2024 Design Showcase Award Of Merit
Starting in 2010, leaders of Rose Villa Senior Living created a multiphase master plan to reinvent its outdated campus in Portland, Ore. This strategy led to the opening of Phase 1 in 2016, delivering loft apartments and pocket neighborhood cottages, followed by Phase 2, which added four new independent living neighborhoods on campus (completed in 2019).
More than a decade later, the third (and, for now, final) phase of the campus transformation was completed in December 2022, comprising the new Madrona Grove, a four-story community with long-term intermediate care on the first floor and a 32-unit residential care facility on the second floor, and Schroeder Lofts, a five-story independent living community with 35 units.
Surrounding a shared landscaped courtyard that serves as an outdoor room, both buildings are designed to look like separate projects, using a variety of architectural and material elements, but are connected below grade, meaning they were designed, permitted, and constructed together as one—adding to the complexities of expanding on an already bustling 22-acre garden campus.
The project was submitted to the EFA Showcase by Scott Edwards Architecture LLP (Portland, Ore.).
Several features caught jurors’ attention, including intentional efforts to support connection among residents and the surrounding community as well as the project’s focus on well-being and sustainability, using daylighting strategies and a greywater recycling system.
Here, Timothy B. Gordon, associate, project architect and designer at Scott Edwards Architecture, dives into some of the design details that earned the project an Award of Merit.
Environments for Aging: What challenges did the design team face to deliver this project?
Timothy B. Gordon: Our team understood early on the complexities that this project would have pairing a multifamily residential building with a skilled nursing building. The challenges included the unique design character and composition and drastically different occupancies, construction types, and code requirements of each building, plus constructing on an already active campus.
Specifically, Madrona Grove is an all-steel structure with one floor of skilled nursing, one floor housing a resident care facility, and an administrative floor above. Schroeder Lofts is a four-story wood-framed structure for independent living. Differing elements like emergency egress, access control, fireproofing, construction materials, and more had to be considered.
Navigating the varied requirements necessitated the project team, including subconsultants and contractor, be on the same page. For example, the contractor was responsible for a full clash-detection BIM model that showed all structural, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) for the entire project to identify any issues. This was pivotal for the intertwining of MEP systems across both buildings.
Access to the outdoors is a notable feature of the project. How did you design and plan both buildings to maximize connections to nature?
The culture at Rose Villa is incredibly active, and we wanted to be sure this was represented in the design by incorporating a range of outdoor spaces supporting various activities. The shared courtyard has walking paths that use a higher-quality concrete mix to improve longevity and durability in all-weather seasons, and the landscaping features a variety of textures and bloom periods, all decisions that consider year-
round enjoyment.
Residences maximize natural daylight, comfort, and independence, and careful thought went into how to best organize private and public spaces within the floorplans of each building to support an indoor-outdoor connection. The massing of both buildings lends itself to outdoor space. For example, the first floor of Schroeder Lofts is shifted to create an opportunity for terraces at the Level 2 courtyard-side lofts, and the upper floor of both buildings steps back to create extensive outdoor garden spaces and terraces.
How are Schroeder Lofts and Madrona Grove designed to have individual identities while adding to the existing campus character?
The aesthetic for both buildings is rich in texture and reminiscent of neighborhoods you’d find in the Portland, Ore., area. Schroeder Lofts’ inspiration came from turn-of-the-century industrial warehouses in Portland’s Pearl District repurposed into residential penthouses. Here, it’s characterized by a juxtaposition of old and new elements, large expanses of glass, antique brick, and black industrial fixtures paired with contemporary materials for the windows and upper siding. The building mass is broken down with changes of color and materials at the north end.
Madrona Grove is inspired by the modern farmhouse style. The charm present in this style adds to the small home model of the program spaces within the building. The façade recreates elements of “home” but at a larger scale, using stained cedar, painted board and batten, horizontal siding, and shingle, with forged metal and heavy timber accents.
How does the project prioritize connecting residents with the community at large?
The Rose Villa campus could have decided to enclose itself in a fence and turn inward, but instead it has opened to the neighborhood and invited everyone in. In this project, a café and second-hand store add to the neighborhood feel and offer residents places to connect with one another and with visitors in the same way that they likely did prior to moving to Rose Villa.
Additionally, a child development center anchors the ground floor of Schroeder Loft’s north end and provides childcare for up to 36 children. The program connects the residents with children and parents every day as they access the center through the main lobby or play outside in the adjacent playgrounds.
Jurors lauded the project as innovative for its use of a greywater system. Tell us about it.
In the Pacific Northwest, our awareness of and respect for water runs deep, and this helped drive our desire to develop ROSIE (Recycled Organic “Stuff” is Everywhere), a system that recycles greywater in Schroeder Lofts.
Sources like bathroom sinks, showers, and washing machines are plumbed to deliver greywater to the garage-level treatment room, where it goes through a multistep process, including a prefilter, textile filter, ozone filter, and micron filter. The filtered water is then used for non-potable water demands, such as toilet flushing and irrigation.
This water conservation system saves approximately 303,214 gallons of potable water per year and is the first of its kind in a Portland, Ore., senior living community.
For more on this year’s Design Showcase winners, go here.
Anne DiNardo is editor-in-chief of Environments for Aging and can be reached at [email protected].
