A Nursing Home Community

Abstract

The western culture strives for advancement in every aspect of life. Medical technology advances exponentially from year to year. Once a milestone has been reached, a new discovery renders it obsolete. Treatments become more prevalent and death is postponed further, only to fuel the ever growing population of our elderly. But with the constant struggle to extend life, those who fight the battle to live longer seem to be tucked into far corners of endless corridors in hospitals or nursing homes. This thesis aims to discover ways to connect our communities to our ill and valuable citizens living in nursing homes. Studies will look for ways to incorporate the cultured and knowledgeable elderly back into the community, and to stoke the possibilities to learn from their experiences and principles they live by. In doing this, the hope is to help our communities and residents of nursing homes raise the overall quality of life. The project will require a wide range of unique programmatic elements to be successful. The program will create a certain amount of attraction to the building and help create community involvement. There will be a focus on how residents within the nursing home, but also how the public will interact with the building and its immediate surroundings. By creating a connection between residents in nursing homes and the public, it is a possibility to change the view of our elderly and lesson the dread of growing older. The exploration of environmental effects and social impacts on a person of poor health will find how architecture, medicine, and social surroundings can improve the lives of those living in a nursing home and the richness of our communities.