AIAS/SAGE Student Design Competition
SAGE has collaborated with the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) to sponsor an annual student design competition. The purpose of this program is to elicit new ideas for improving long term care environments, especially in existing medical-model nursing homes. By engaging architecture students in this enterprise, AIAS and SAGE have been able to tap into the enthusiasm and creativity of academia, unbridled by the preconceptions and established formulas that often inform the work of more experienced practitioners. AIAS has a demonstrated track record of accomplishing its mission of fostering innovation through design competitions that are solely educational in intent. Toward this end, they:
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present new challenges and opportunities to design students and faculty,
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assist instructors in creating relevant content for studio projects, and
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encourage an entrepreneurial spirit among design students.
The goals of a more resident-centered design approach include the creation of smaller households or neighborhoods with active common spaces intended to help normalize social relations among elders, staff, family, and visitors. In addition, it is desirable to provide resident-controlled access to meaningful activity and therapeutic spaces, including secure outdoor areas and program spaces dedicated to attracting and involving members of the outside community.
Among the outmoded institutional components to be avoided in newly renovated or designed environments are side-by-side beds, long double-loaded resident corridors, centralized dining and bathing facilities, and prominent inaccessible nurse stations. Such features tend to diminish basic quality-of-life determinants such as privacy, choice, and control, and have been shown to contribute to learned dependency. Rather the design of eldercare environments can serve as a tool to reinforce and support optimal resident functioning, independence, and dignity if approached in the context of a fundamentally residential design idiom.
The annual AIAS/SAGE Student Design Competition seeks to foster and support the training of young architects in the area of designing for elders. In the process, it has proven to be an effective vehicle both for generating bold new ideas for gerontological environments as well as for recruiting talented young designers into the senior living market.
Click here to view the winning entries of the first annual competition, announced at the 2010 Environments for Aging conference in
San Diego.
CALL FOR ENTRIES:
Registration is now open for the second annual AIAS/SAGE Rebuilding Home Student Design Competition. For more information, visit the competition website at http://sage.aias.org.