Environments for Aging - Fall 2017 - 24

Now and then

Members of EFA's new Editorial Advisory Board share their perspectives on how-and why-
the senior living design industry has evolved since the magazine's launch in 1997, and what
challenges and opportunities they see ahead By Jennifer Kovacs Silvis
Senior living environments-and senior living design as an
industry-have come a long way since Environments for Aging
was launched 20 years ago. The magazine has, too (for more,
see page 23). This issue brings the addition of a new Editorial
Advisory Board, composed of 19 senior-level professionals
including architects, interior designers, owners/providers, and
consultants. To help recognize the 20th anniversary of EFA,
the group gathered recently via conference call, sharing stories
and perspectives on the industry's evolution over the past two
decades.
When EFA's previous incarnation, Design magazine, was
first published in 1997, nursing homes (still the nomenclature
at the time) remained the prevailing housing type. These highly
regulated environments were institutional in nature, defined by

By Jennifer Kovacs Silvis

EFAmagazine.com * Fall 2017

for example. "We could do the kinds of things we wanted to
do: make it homelike, make it more hospitality-inspired, give
residents choice. Then, we said, how do we do that in long-term
care, because these residents are going to be moving through
the continuum. That's what we saw as the obstacle," says Dan
Cinelli, managing principal and board director at Perkins Eastman
(Washington, D.C.).

Submitted by Tsang
Architecture This remodeled
center provides adult day
care and outpatient care
for ambulatory seniors in a
non-institutional environment,
with three contiguous day
rooms easily reconfigurable
for various activities or group
sizes.

High score

The timeline on the
following pages
highlights some of the
award-winning projects
from Environments for
Aging's (and Design's)
past 20 years of
annual design
competitions,
detailing how and
why these projects
stood out and
painting a picture
of best practices that
emerged over time

double-loaded corridors, shared resident rooms, artificial light,
and centralized nursing. But change was afoot.
Assisted living was emerging as a desirable new option,
board members describe, largely because it didn't come
with the stringent codes the industry was so used to balancing. It allowed designers to begin playing with scale, breaking
60-resident platforms down into smaller households of eight,

1997

Copper Ridge
Sykesville, Md.

1998

On Lok Senior
Health by Institute
on Aging/UCSF

[[RUN WITH
RESIDENT ROOM,
PAGE 10]]

1999
Rose Arbor
Hospice

Kalamazoo, Mich.

San Francisco

Submitted by Perkins Eastman
Designed to address the continuum
of care needs for individuals with
Alzheimer's disease, the new-build
project includes assisted living,
nursing care, and adult day care in a
small group model featuring private
resident rooms.

[[RUN WITH DAY
ROOM, TOP, ON
PAGE 13]]

Submitted by Diekema/Hamann
Architects Without existing state
regulations for hospice design to guide
the project, the design team modified
nursing home regulations with solutions
to support residents and families, such
as residential interiors, family support
spaces, and decentralized spaces for
staff.

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Environments for Aging - Fall 2017

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