Trending in Senior Living Design
The pandemic accelerates new design trends for senior living environments, Improving wellness outcomes for the elderly, refining indoor air quality, access to Nature, circadian lighting, and outdoor wellness activities. WELL Building certified is not just a fancy pedigree trend but a design consequence that can make a difference in surviving the virus or catching the flu.
Healing Design forecast ten trends in the design for senior living environments:
1. A new care model is emerging from the traditional care model focusing on shelter, food, and physical care to a human-centered model embracing the whole person, the mind, body, and spirit.
2. Human Engagement is a trend based on relationships and human connections which strengthen bonds between generations, family, community, and caregivers
3. Place of Meaning which provides value, social engagement, and entertainment.
4. Design interventions that target action-based outcomes such as reminiscence and art therapy.
5. Home Like environments that provide safe places with the familiar comforts of home
6. Artful furnishings provide style, comfort, ergonomics, and dignity with the move away from the institutional setting.
7. Light and Color trending to play a critical role in safety, as well as delights the spirit.
8. Technology Innovation can contribute to safe touchless equipment and materials as well as environments of fun and entertainment.
9. Access to Nature to provide the nature connection and enrich seniors' lives from garden activities, dining al fresco, pet therapy, balconies, and views of outdoor spaces.
10. Sensory Engagement to provide a visceral and emotional connection. Pleasure can be activated through the senses, such as aromatherapy, visual cueing, and music therapy.
These trends can help fill gaps in our approach to senior communities' design, housing, memory care villages, and those living in their own homes. These emerging trends offer hope, dignity, happiness, and innovation that is affordable and healthy.
Using Evidence Based on Design for Interior Features to Promote Healing Environments
Evidence-Based Design (EBD) is a method based on credible research, on how the physical environment can influence well-being, promote healing, relieve pain and stress, and reduce medical errors, infections and falls. We incorporate these into every design decision. Healing Design. Is committed to performing this research and its publication as it relates to Evidence-Based Design, the Center for Health Design, the Joint Commission, the American Hospital Association and the Institute for Quality Management in Healthcare.
Research has shown that patients are more comfortable when they can see outside and have a view while in bed, that interactions with others reduce stress and promotes wellbeing and that employees are more productive, motivated and confident in an environment that considers the factors listed in the image below.
Healthcare Design requires environmnets to be not just aesthetically pleasing, but founded upon evidence based design practice to provide fully conducive to holistic care. Ergonomics, noise, windows, access to nature, distractions, comfortable furniture, air quality, finishes, wayfinding and architecture are all fertile areas of research and constitute a checklist for evidence based designs. Healing Design and our consultants go further. We include things such as cost, evidence based artwork, access to technology, security, sustainability, ease of cleaning and repair, customer support, durability, mass casualty and of course, the Human-Centric philosophy for projects.
Design for Cancer Journey
The cancer treatment journey embraces the patient and their loved ones across the cancer experience from diagnosis through survivorship. This journey is complex, diverse, and intensely human. Individuals must cope with numerous physical and emotional challenges, balancing clinical tasks alongside emotional unknowns. The human-centered design focuses on understanding the breadth of factors that contribute to a patient’s cancer experiences.
Healing design is critically important for the cancer patient, as design aligns with human emotion and the visceral response to the experience. The design engages the human senses to activate the experience. It is the experiences that impact outcomes. For example, access to natural light engages the sense of sight that can create the positive experience of views of nature and sunlight. This experience is visceral and emotional, reducing stress and contributes to positive emotions.
The pandemic crisis affirms the most important issue in health care interior design right now is infection mitigation. In the midst of the pandemic, facilities are seeking to provide a safe environment for staff and patients in the midst of the highly contagious virous. Materiality and air quality also play a vital role. Materials using nanotechnology and silver ion treatments, air filtration, humidity controls and technology that destroy bacteria are promising advances in this area, she says.
With contagious diseases providing significant challenges, the single patient rooms, is one of the most significant health care design developments, Universal patient rooms are believed to improve patient safety by reducing the chance of infection and promoting family involvement in patient care. Huelat says universal rooms, which are designed for every acuity level, are now heavily discussed as the COVID’s need for ICU’s have increased the demand. Since a patient can remain in a universal room even when his or her condition changes, this too, is expected to be shown a safer, more comfortable design for patients and their families.
The Healing Journey from Chaos to Order
Suicide Prevention, Gambling Treatment Programs, Veterans Crisis Line, National Domestic Violence, Child Abuse, and the list go on and on the mental health crisis facing our nation today.
Design for Behavior Health is the story of what the environment can do to provide design interventions to deal with this challenge. The healing power of nature is the foundation of how our design approach aims to bring serenity and emotional support to one’s journey from chaos to order.
Behavior health environmental design provides exceptional support to individuals in psychiatric crisis. These environments offer a wide range of design interventions such as positive distractions, reminiscent therapy, pet therapy, lighting for circadian rhythm access to nature, and sensory stimulation. Trending in behavior health facilities uniquely integrates family services, primary health, peer to peer counseling with evidence-based design principles providing a physically healthy and emotional healing environment.
The design thinking challenge is to reduce redundancy and increase cost savings by bringing the disparate population to a secure location that provides human-centric support while empowering individuals to their highest functional ability. Design interventions can result in better services for individuals with complex needs.
“One of her most notable attribute is that Ms. Huelat is an excellent collaborator for sponsored activities with international and domestic scholars. She was not only responsive to shape the focus of health ecology education but was activity engaged in providing critical comments and innovative ideas to reshape the green hospital.”
Thomas TH Wan, PhD, MHS. Professor of Health Management and Informatics, Public Affairs and Medical Education
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