Design with concerns: A community-based senior center in Germany

Community-based care facilities have a positive effect in supporting older adults and people with dementia thus improving their well-beings. Despite authoring empirical studies focused on providing design interventions, researchers often remain unclear about whether and how exactly practitioners and architects should implement these interventions. This paper presents an on-going project of a senior center in a small municipality in Germany. It aims to explain how the municipality (the client) and the design team (the architect) cooperate to apply updated research-based interventions, and how trade-offs are made. It discusses several research-based interventions during the design process. They include: 1) the early engagement of architects into the planning process; 2) the use of small-scale care units as care concept; 3) offering easily accessible and visible communal areas within the building; 4) providing an area open to the neighborhood; and 5) taking into consideration of the local urban form and materials. The article enables the readers to gain an insider look of the design process of a care facility and become familiar with some of the common trade-offs in design practice. Sufficient access to research materials and efficient communication with the client from the beginning of a project are the key elements to successfully implement research-based design interventions