Hospice Of The Valley Dementia Care And Education Campus, Phoenix: 2023 EFA Design Showcase Award Of Merit
At just 102,000 square feet, the Hospice of the Valley Dementia Care and Education Campus in Phoenix delivers multiple services and care settings for its residents and the community at large.
The project, submitted to the Design Showcase by Lizard Rock Designs LLC (Tucson, Ariz.), was completed in June 2022 and houses a 66,700-square-foot parking podium and 36,000 square feet of space that supports assisted living, palliative care, adult day care, childcare, and education.
The $20.9 million project is built on the mission to not only care for individuals with dementia but provide education about the disease to combat the stigma associated with it. Sited within an established residential neighborhood, the campus immerses residents and other building users in the community and establishes normalcy and connection.
However, that location came with challenges—most notably, integrating parking for 150 vehicles without overwhelming the neighborhood nor the small-scale residential feel of the campus itself. The solution is a below-grade podium parking structure. The structure is hidden from view by landscaped berms and stone-faced walls that form a base around the facility’s buildings.
The Design Showcase jury applauded the thoughtful parking solution as well as another notable exterior element: architecture that supports resident safety when outside without electronic controls. The campus features creative use of raised planting beds and stone walls that prevent wandering while supporting exploration. Each resident suite features its own outdoor patio, as well.
Meanwhile, childcare is offered on-site in addition to adult day care, with a shared patio for the two programs featuring movable glass walls to permit intergenerational activities.
In this Q+A with Environments for Aging, Thomas McQuillen, principal at Lizard Rock Designs, offers insight on some of the jurors’ favorite features that earned the project an Award of Merit.
Environments for Aging: The campus’ location within an existing residential neighborhood is a huge benefit to the project but also presented an architectural challenge. What did your team have to work through to integrate the parking structure, particularly, so well?
Thomas McQuillen: Our goal was to integrate the parking structure into a terraced base surrounding the buildings and minimize its impact on the neighborhood both visually and audibly. Since mechanical ventilation is extremely loud, we used natural ventilation [of the garage] through a green wall along the north edge and horizonal grilles in the loop road at the south edge.
The parking structure has a green roof with several wells large enough to accommodate fully mature trees. Thanks to the green roof, it is impossible to tell there is parking below. We terraced the east and west edges of the structure to further soften the parking, using walls faced with natural stone like those in the garden. From the family entrances to each care building and along the adjacent 44th Street, the buildings look like one- or two-story houses.
Our jury loved the exterior solutions that allow residents to explore the outdoors safely. How did the site design evolve to identify a way that architecture and landscaping could help bypass the need for electronic controls?
Our approach was to create a village-like group of buildings around the garden with no obvious, direct exits to the street. The buildings become the enclosure with the garden as the heart of the project. Within the garden, there are raised planters and low walls faced with natural stone that define spaces for residents.
For example, there is a planted area between the shaded outdoor seating pavilion and the play area. The play area is raised two feet and feels close and visible, but there is no obvious way to wander into it. Each resident patio is separated by a low stone wall from the adjacent patio and by a raised planter from the garden. The patio feels surrounded by the garden and has views in all directions, but residents cannot wander into a neighbor’s suite. Orientation in the garden is reinforced by the inclusion of memorable objects such as water fountains, flagpoles, or sculptures on each patio.
This is a small project but packs a punch in terms of the care and services it provides. How did you reconcile the program when approaching the overall design?
The garden reconciles the different parts of the program. Each activity or type of care has a different relationship and access to the garden. Assisted living and palliative care both have patios that open directly to the garden from common areas. Residents can walk between the two buildings and throughout the garden. Childcare and adult day care are elevated a few feet above the garden. Participants come down to the garden with staff so that interaction happens in a controlled way.
The education building opens to a patio that is separated from the garden by a decorative metal fence. Attendees at educational conferences on campus can see the garden but not access it, and residents can come to the café in the education building with staff or family members. Residents have the most direct, unfettered access, while more public functions have less access under more controlled conditions to protect the residents.
The interiors were noted for being warm and friendly. How do you describe the aesthetic and what inspired the end result?
We took our cue for the interior aesthetic from mid-century modern homes common to the Arcadia neighborhood. We hoped that the scale, massing, and materials of the simple buildings would feel familiar and reinforce a sense of home and self for residents. The interiors of mid-century homes are characterized by simple detailing, lots of natural light, and an emphasis on natural materials.
We kept the color palette muted to allow furnishings, art, and special objects to animate each space. Walls are cream colored typically, and there are oak doors and trim throughout the building. Counters and built-in millwork are typically white or off-white to reinforce a light, open residential feel.
What’s one takeaway from this project that you’d share with our EFA readers, something you learned and will apply to future projects?
The remarkable thing about this project and this client is the commitment to the idea that the person is not the disease. It is important to understand the disease to know how best to design an environment to support the person.
For more on the 2023 Design Showcase award winners, go here.
Jennifer Kovacs Silvis is brand director of Environments for Aging and can be reached at [email protected].
