For many older individuals, reminiscing about the halcyon days often means taking a mental trip back to a neighborhood akin to The Andy Griffith Show’s Mayberry; quiet streets lined with family owned ice cream shops, barbers, and hardware stores.
It is hard enough to find a neighborhood like that in today’s world, let alone a senior or assisted living facility, facilities that often times have a sterile, hospital-like appearance. But as inhabitant.com reports, an Ohio-based company called The Lantern is offering residents an opportunity to capture some of that small town goodness from their past.
The Lantern, which has centers in three cities, has hallways meant to look like a residential street. Each entrance to a resident’s home resembles the front of a house, complete with a front porch and rocking chairs. The hallways have carpets meant to look like grassy paths, ceilings that mimic the changing sky, and recordings of birdsongs playing in the background. In addition to the residential areas, a “Main Street” leads to a space that resembles a small downtown shopping district with street lamps and cafe tables.
Beyond just providing a more pleasing aesthetic to the residents, this type of environment has been scientifically linked to repairing memory loss in patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s.
The Lantern provides all the care expected from a senior assisted living facility and adds unexpected amenities such as a full-service salon with spa treatments,massage therapy, aerobics, a movie theater, fitness center, library, and a 24-hour bistro.
For more information, click here.
Related Stories
| Aug 30, 2013
A new approach to post-occupancy evaluations
As a growing number of healthcare institutions become more customer-focused, post-occupancy evaluations (POE) are playing a bigger role in new construction and renovation projects. Advocate Health Care is among the healthcare organizations to institute a detailed post-occupancy assessment process for its projects.
| Aug 26, 2013
What you missed last week: Architecture billings up again; record year for hotel renovations; nation's most expensive real estate markets
BD+C's roundup of the top construction market news for the week of August 18 includes the latest architecture billings index from AIA and a BOMA study on the nation's most and least expensive commercial real estate markets.
| Aug 26, 2013
13 must-attend continuing education sessions at BUILDINGChicago
Building Design+Construction's new conference and expo, BUILDINGChicago, kicks off in two weeks. The three-day event will feature more than 65 AIA CES and GBCI accredited sessions, on everything from building information modeling and post-occupancy evaluations to net-zero projects and LEED training. Here are 13 sessions I'm planning to attend.
| Aug 22, 2013
Energy-efficient glazing technology [AIA Course]
This course discuses the latest technological advances in glazing, which make possible ever more efficient enclosures with ever greater glazed area.
| Aug 14, 2013
Green Building Report [2013 Giants 300 Report]
Building Design+Construction's rankings of the nation's largest green design and construction firms.
| Jul 30, 2013
Better planning and delivery sought for VA healthcare facilities
Making Veterans Administration healthcare projects “better planned, better delivered” is the new goal of the VA’s Office of Construction and Facilities Management.
| Jul 30, 2013
Healthcare designers get an earful about controlling medical costs
At the current pace, in 2020 the U.S. will spend $4.2 trillion a year on healthcare; unchecked, waste would hit $1.2 trillion. Yet “waste” is keeping a lot of poorly performing hospitals in business, said healthcare facility experts at the recent American College of Healthcare Architects/AIA Academy of Architecture for Health Summer Leadership Summit in Chicago.
| Jul 30, 2013
Healthcare designers and builders, beware: the ‘Obamacare’ clock is ticking down to midnight [2013 Giants 300 Report]
Hard to believe, but we’re only six months away from when the Affordable Care Act will usher in a radical transformation of the American healthcare system. Healthcare operators are scrambling to decipher what the new law will mean to their bottom lines and capital facility budgets.
| Jul 30, 2013
Top Healthcare Sector Construction Firms [2013 Giants 300 Report]
Turner, McCarthy, Clark Group top Building Design+Construction's 2013 ranking of the largest healthcare contractors and construction management firms in the U.S.
| Jul 30, 2013
Top Healthcare Sector Engineering Firms [2013 Giants 300 Report]
AECOM, Jacobs, URS top Building Design+Construction's 2013 ranking of the largest healthcare engineering and engineering/architecture firms in the U.S.