Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/687429
J UNE 2016 | 79 All Seniors Memory Care Residence RENDERING COURTESY PAGE + STEELE / IBI GROUP ARCHITECTS All Seniors Memory Care Residence I magine a building that not only shelters those living with dementia, but actually provides active treatment for dementia, through well-researched, thoughtful building and interior design. The All Seniors Memory Care Residence in Kanata, Ontario is a custom-designed, single-storey facility for residents with memory care needs, and goes beyond providing a home- like environment to its 71 residents. Throughout the building are areas of interest, designed to bring comfort, foster independence and to reflect elements of bygone years. Marlene Makowka, principal of Hefele Makowka Design Associates Inc. explains, "These areas of interest create a familiar setting from their past that will encourage interaction within the space. The intent is to support their remaining abilities and provide pleasure while maintaining their dignity. Our design team has done extensive research, interviewed with gerontologists and service providers to obtain relevant information that has helped us to form a foundation in creating these vignettes. It is crucial to incorporate elements that will promote independent use, purpose and accomplishment, while ensuring the residents' safety." All Seniors has been on the forefront of developing residences to accommodate the unique needs of these individuals, and their prototype grew from 10 per cent to approximately 50 per cent of the units catering to assisted care living. Brian Sickle, principle with IBI Group Architects says: "This is the tenth project we have done with All Seniors. They are an excellent operator, and able to adapt very quickly. This project gave us an opportunity to focus on the whole issue of memory care in great detail. In fact, we enlisted a group called IBI THINK, a pure research group that explores health-care issues within IBI to assist us with the design of this facility. The group comes up with concepts, accommodations and even technologies involving the health care field which we can apply to our hospital, clinic, or senior's projects." For example, it is not uncommon for seniors with dementia to continue to have robust physical health, which creates interesting challenges in designing living space to meet their changing needs, and creates conditions that affect the physical design of a building significantly. "We wanted something not imposing and not institutional. This building is almost like a child's drawing of a house, so it is instantly recognizable and homelike to the 71 residents who will live there, and their friends." The large house is then broken down into smaller, self-contained homes. There is a central entrance and four distinct houses, each with its own fireplace and living area, centred around an exterior courtyard, which is completely secure and allows residents to wander in a circular path, instead of ending up at a dead end. "This is critical," Sickle says, "because running up against a dead end at the end of a path or hallway, for example, is confusing and frightening for them." There are six courtyards in the design, all different from one another, with each dining room overlooking a courtyard. The rooms themselves offer subtle site lines and nuanced lighting in order to ease life for residents, and the staff who care for them. Each room boasts a bay window that also adds extra seating for visitors, or a surface for favourite objects. "It also adds an extra sense of home, and is the key element and anchor of each room," says Sickle. Staff can also see the resident in their bed from the doorway, for unobtrusive nighttime checks. Each of the bathrooms has sliding doors with lighting that can be seen from the bed, to provide a visual cue to residents. "Each resident will also have their own memory box," explains Brad Chase, associate at IBI. "It will be a small box outside their door, that contains something that is meaningful to them, to help them remember and to locate their own door." "For doors to areas that are not intended for residents' use, such as kitchens and other back-of-house amenities, we camouflage with the use of murals or a finish to blend in with adjacent wall surfaces, to deter them from wanting to enter," explains Makowka. Safety of everyone who uses the building took on a slightly new dimension because the building itself is located in a very active seismic zone, so reinforcing to carry a large seismic load was mandatory, as was using non-combustible materials. "The biggest part of this building is its size and the fact that it was designed to look like a big house, on one level," says Craig Slama, structural consultant with Jablonsky, Ast and Partners. "We used steel beam construction with no drill zones to meet code. These are not new or noteworthy materials, but the way it came together is exciting for us, as we don't typically build one-storey projects." Marie-Josee Laplante, project manager with Pomerleau Inc. adds there are pros and cons to building prefab projects like All Seniors. "What we did is split the building into four quadrants, and build one quadrant at a time. The challenge will be the overlap of workers, but we spent a great deal of time in the preplanning, and so we have workers doing the courtyard at the same time as the structure is going up." It's a dynamic process, in a space that will soon see seniors who require memory care living in a home where every inch is designed with care, to provide pleasure, stimulation and dignity. A LOCATION 630 Eagleson Road, Kanata, Ontario OWNER/DEVELOPER All Seniors Care Living Centres ARCHITECT Page + Steele / IBI Group Architects GENERAL CONTRACTOR Pomerleau Inc. STRUCTURAL CONSULTANT Jablonsky, Ast and Partners MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL CONSULTANT M.V. Shore Associates Limited INTERIOR DESIGN Hefele Makowka Design Associates Inc. TOTAL SIZE 4,875 square metres TOTAL COST $13 million by SUSAN PEDERSON 12:11 PM 514-326-0608 | info@camitec.ca | www.camitec.ca Congratulations to Pomerleau Inc. and all participants involved in an outstanding project – All Seniors Memory Care Residence! Camitec.indd 1 16-05-19 8:36 We are proud to be part of the All Seniors Memory Care Residence project team! Congratulations Pomerleau Inc. on another successful project. 613.830.0165 | service@srmech.com | www.srmechanical.ca S R Mechanical.indd 1 16-05-18 2:40