Most senior living, skilled nursing, and short-term rehabilitation communities are developed and designed with residents’ needs in mind. However, considering more than just the basic functional needs of other user groups who interact with the building—staff, visitors, and even passers-by—is also worthy of consideration in the early design phases and can have a significant positive impact in a variety of ways.
When staff—who work long and demanding shifts—have amenities incorporated just for them, their ability to provide the highest level of care improves. When special attention is given to visitors, considering how to make their time with loved ones more enjoyable and convenient, residents will in turn receive more frequent and longer visits, which can improve their well-being and combat feelings of isolation. Thoughtfully designing the building’s exterior creates a positive impression on members of the local community who may only ever see it—and judge it—from the outside.
OZ Architecture’s senior living practice recently conducted an in-depth exploration of the needs of each of these user groups, an exercise that included where and how they spend their time and ways design and architecture could elevate their experience. The results offer important insights into the most beneficial ways to build and design communities that inspire comfortable and positive experiences for those who interact with them.
Staff
With a good understanding of how and where different staff members spend their time, with whom they spend it, and their common needs, design elements can be developed that will increase employee well-being and, as a result, improve the resident experience.
In the firm’s exploration of this topic, community staffers weighed in on amenities that can enhance their time in the workplace and provide a place for them to retreat and relax, such as:
  • Access to natural light. This was found to be very important to the well-being of staff members, who typically spend time in areas of a facility that have little access to daylight. Bringing daylight into corridors, nurses’ stations, and kitchens with the addition of windows and skylights can have a dramatic effect on employees’ day-to-day experiences and happiness at work.
  • An appealingly landscaped outdoor area that connects to the staff breakroom. It’s important to give employees a dedicated space to relax outside. Staff members observed that while there were many outdoor areas for residents to enjoy, there was typically nothing just for them.
  • Localized break spaces. Often with just 10 to 15 minutes to spare, busy team members don’t have time to get to a faraway breakroom between rehab appointments, rounds, and charting. By providing mini-break spaces interspersed throughout a community, staff have conveniently located areas where they can sit down for a few minutes, eat a quick lunch, or make a personal phone call.
  • A small, back-of-house locker room and bathing facility. These spaces offer employees the ability to freshen up, shower, and change clothes during or after a long shift. Research demonstrated that operators in more active communities or regions—such as Colorado, where many employees ride their bikes to work or exercise during breaks—saw great value in incorporating this feature.
Visitors
Visitors play a crucial role in the lives of residents and are key to boosting feelings of happiness and a sense of well-being. Encouraging visitors to come more frequently and stay longer is critical; providing amenities and conveniences for visitors should be a priority for all communities.
Some appealing visitor amenities might include:
  • A variety of dining options. Eating is an activity that brings people together, and having diverse dining choices is becoming a must-have for new senior living communities. There’s a continual shift away from one large cafeteria and toward smaller destination dining. Visitor feedback also indicated that broader food options and more casual dining areas are important to them. A coffee bar, bistro, formal dining room, wine bar, and/or a casual deli can add environments that accommodate the individual tastes of visitors, encourage connection and conversation, and provide a variety of comfortable spaces where guests can spend time with residents.
  • A business center where friends and family can work while visiting residents. Having to set aside work obligations entirely can be stressful for visitors, especially if they’d like to come more frequently or stay for extended periods of time. Providing a quiet place to work remotely helps alleviate that stress and makes it more convenient to spend additional time in the community. An ideal location is in semi-public, neutral space between the main community entrance and the resident rooms. To reduce pushback from owners and operators on the amount of space being carved out, these spaces can be designed at less than 100 square feet with a single desk and a door that can be closed for privacy.
  • Suites for overnight guests. A community that offers overnight accommodations can allow an out-of-town guest to stay longer. If one or two suites are available to be rented as private accommodations, visits can be more productive and less taxing. Operators might set a rate lower than a hotel room, encouraging frequent use and allowing the suite to pay for itself and the cost of the staff time required to clean it.
  • Recreation areas. Separate relaxation/entertainment areas to serve various ages and stages might include outdoor play structures for younger children, media or game rooms for teens, and a theater room where adults can enjoy one another’s company without the pressure of socializing. For example, OZ Architecture is currently designing a 150-square-foot kids room at the Golden Lodge Assisted Living Center in Golden, Colo., which will include toys for younger children, creative stations like a chalkboard-painted wall, and a media/video game center with bean bag seating for tweens and teens. It features glass doors and windows that face out to a bistro wine bar, allowing parents and residents to sit and talk while maintaining a visual connection to their children. Even though this area doesn’t generate revenue, the owners agreed that it would add value by reinforcing a commitment to creating a community that places value on residents and visitors spending time together.
Passers-by
Well-designed, inviting, and visually interesting exterior architecture and landscaping elements elevate an entire community and are far more likely to generate a positive response to the building from the general public, even if local residents never have occasion to actually go inside. This can be achieved by incorporating diverse design elements like lighting and landscaping that create interest and safety at the edge of the site. Utilizing alternating materials, textures, colors, and varying window sizes and patterns also creates architectural interest. Tall landscaping serves residents and passers-by alike by providing privacy, screening, and visual dimension.
In the course of OZ Architecture’s research on the passer-by experience, it was learned that the initial impression given by the traditional orientation of a large parking lot separating a building from the street edge created a lack of connection to those in the public way. Instead, a clear, inviting, and flowing path to the main entrance is far more visually interesting and pleasing to those on the street and in the community. Just as the entrance to a house is intuitive, the entrance to a community should likewise be easy to find from the site edge and parking areas.
Additional lighting at the human scale is another relatively small change that can add big impact to existing buildings in creating a friendlier exterior and simpler wayfinding. Going beyond the required pole-mounted lights and utilizing bollards and sconce lighting on a building can create a softer, more comforting glow around the site and building façade.
Architectural and design tweaks to the exterior, such as the introduction of wood, brick, or stone at the pedestrian level, can have a similarly dramatic effect on the overall opinion passers-by have of a community. Some of the feedback received indicated that individuals equated higher quality exterior building materials to higher quality care being given within. Similarly, adding lively and interesting landscaping is an easy and cost-efficient fix that makes a positive impression. Instead of planting the minimum vegetation required by a city, which can result in stark beds of mulch or gravel interspersed with the occasional plant or tree, bringing in abundant and diverse plantings in varied heights and outdoor features that passers-by can interact with or use (such as benches, large stones, or a fountain) help demonstrate that the building is a fixture of the community and not just an institution.
The greater good
The best communities, from assisted living to rehabilitation, are those where the environments and amenities take the needs of all users into consideration. It’s important to approach the initial architecture and design process with this in mind and encourage owners and operators to understand that if they want passers-by and community members to view their building positively, staff to enjoy working there, and loved ones to enjoy visiting, they can’t cater solely to the resident. It’s time to enhance the experience of everyone who will interact with the space.
Jami Mohlenkamp is a principal at OZ Architecture (Denver), where he leads the senior living practice area. He can be reached at jmohlenkamp@ozarch.com.