Insights & Solutions

Learn about: the homelike model for resident care Riverside Assisted Living Facility Administration wanted to apply, the full-scale mock-ups of the proposed living spaces that launched the project, and the ‘neighborhood’ concept that enables greater resident independence as well as safety.

Healthcare is provided in a variety of settings, from a person’s home to outpatient clinics, to the hospital. While the settings and specific design elements may differ across the continuum of care, the objectives of safety, efficiency, satisfaction, and high quality care remain constant. This set of interactive diagrams provides a link between the evidence base, design strategies, and desired outcomes – in a visually intuitive and actionable format.

Learn about: cognitive changes that occur with normal aging, the definition and stages of Alzheimer’s disease, and design interventions that can reduce negative behaviors characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease.

The goal for this project was to design the new UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay for health -- for the individuals who will use the new Medical Center, the Mission Bay community, and the greater global environment.

For the 2014 cycle of the Facility Guidelines Institute's health care design guidelines, a brand new volume is being developed for residential and senior living facilities; entitled the Guidelines for Residential Care Facilities: Design & Construction of Health, Care, and Support Facilities. This guideline includes nursing homes, hospice, assisted living, independent living, adult day care, and wellness/diagnostic facilities. The vetted approach to the guidelines is to provide design information, as well as parameters for Authorities Having Jurisdiction to evaluate and incorporate culture change and resident-centered approaches to the residential-based care. 

Developed through extensive review of research, surveys, site tests, and review and validation by expert advisory council members, this standard set of evidence-based design checklists and post-occupancy evaluation (POE) tools can be used by interior designers to apply research to healthcare design projects and to conduct post-occupancy evaluations of three types of hospital patient rooms: adult medical-surgical, adult intensive care, and maternity care.