Insights & Solutions

Understanding the personal abilities and unique challenges faced by aging individuals, especially those living with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, better equips design teams to create supportive care and living spaces. Changes that can be credited to dementia are noticeably different from the changes typical of normal aging, but both can occur at the same time. 

Understanding the personal abilities and unique challenges faced by aging individuals, especially those living with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, better equips design teams to create supportive living spaces. Devising goals that target single symptoms and objectives is not always practical, however, because changes associated with aging, Alzheimer’s disease, and other dementias tend to appear in “clusters” rather than in isolation. The design-based evidence associated with designing supportive memory care settings results in 12 programmatic design strategies.

​This webinar highlights a case study of the ErinoakKids Centre for Treatment and Development and explores how the design caused the building itself to become a tool for therapy, learning, and teaching.

This webinar will focus on the adaptation of an existing space into a behavioral health-compliant facility and the unique approach utilized to ensure organizational success. Presenters will explore how the design process resulted in an environment that maintains the maximum safety and security that these spaces require.

Learn about: the personal abilities and unique challenges faced by aging individuals, including those living with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, how thoughtful design can reduce stress associated with declining physical abilities, memory loss, and care provision.

The goal of the Thompson Autism Center at CHOC is to bring leading-edge, evidence-based design practices to clinical and research spaces to ensure children with ASD receive the best care possible throughout their youth and into early adulthood.

The goals were to: improve operational efficiency via flow and collaboration between the two existing levels; facilitate team-based care; improve patient safety and satisfaction; and improve wayfinding.

Learn about: the personal abilities and unique challenges faced by aging individuals, including those living with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, how thoughtful design can reduce stress associated with declining physical abilities, memory loss, and care provision.

Sachs, N., Shepley, M., Peditto, K., Hankinson, M.T., Giebink, B., Thompson, T. (2019). Health Environments Research & Design Journal. DOI: 10.1177/1937586719856349

The primary goal of this project was to apply the evidence-based design process to inform the design of the new school building. The transdisciplinary team evaluated current research pertaining to the student population, conducted focus groups with staff, and planned a formal study to test hypothesized outcomes in the new space compared to the old space.