Walking away from this year’s EFA Design Showcase judging, one idea was top of mind: This industry is thirsty for risk-taking ideas.
In January, our jury panel gathered at Rose Villa in Portland, Ore., to review the submissions that had made it to the final round of the competition.
In discussions about those projects rising to the top for award contention, I heard jurors talk about rewarding the ones that brought new, sometimes untested, ideas to the table, as well as the need for more forward-thinking models to get to market so that new best practices and lessons can be gathered.
As you dive into our special Design Showcase coverage in the spring issue, you’ll find both new and conceptual projects that are raising the bar in senior living design as well as the project teams and owners delivering them, including those challenging the status quo.
A lot of this year’s award-winning work focused on memory care, which is a welcome sign, but we also saw strides in intergenerational living, urban communities, and more.
All these projects are worthy of recognition, but I also think it’s important to recognize the process that some project teams took to deliver these noteworthy projects—and how taking risks can lead to innovation.
One example is the LiveWell River Homes in Plantsville, Conn., which took home an Award of Merit in this year’s Design Showcase for providing an independent living environment in an assisted living memory care setting.
Dustin Julius, partner at RLPS Architects (Lancaster, Pa.), the firm that submitted the project, explains that the team didn’t seek inspiration from past projects or existing care models, but instead turned to a new source: a traditional New England cottage.
“The idea of creating ‘home’ was not conceived of as an overlay to make a care model feel homelike; rather we took the opposite approach, carefully layering in the code and operational requirements to create a space that was authentically a home, simply more robust in the support it is able to provide,” he says. (For the full Q+A with Julius and Jessie Shappell, senior interior designer at RLPS, see the spring issue.)
The expectation is that senior living will (hopefully) soon emerge from its post-pandemic recovery, bringing an influx of new projects and activity to meet the growing demand for senior housing.
As this happens, it’s important that this industry doesn’t answer that call with only tried-and-true approaches of the past, but also seeks opportunities to step outside its comfort zone to find new game-changing ideas. I look forward to seeing the results.
Anne DiNardo is editor-in-chief of Environments for Aging magazine and can be reached at [email protected].
