Designing for dementia: Long-term memory care, from the ground up

The Village Langley is a community for people living with various forms of dementia. The Main Boulevard at the Village, a new development in Langley, B.C., wends through an idyllic scene. Car-free and edged by flower gardens, it starts at something called the Community Building – an airy, skylight space with a spa, salon and fireside café – before passing by clusters of quaint cottages, each painted a unique, rich colour such as terra cotta or teal. The path ends at the Farm – a large vegetable patch with a bright-red barn overlooking a babbling creek surrounded by tall poplar, spruce and birch trees. Ostensibly, the Village is a suburban fantasy land – the kind of community where many parents would want to raise their kids. It even has a pond, a gazebo and an embarrassment of white picket fences. But the details of the neighbourhood reveal a different, deeper purpose. The cottages are single-storey for wheelchair accessibility, and in fact aren’t cottages at all. Each only looks like a separate home from the outside to create a cozier scale. Within, they are conjoined by communal kitchens, lounges and dining rooms – social spaces for the 72 residents, all of whom have dementia, the most common form of which is Alzheimer’s. The first of its kind in Canada, following a successful model pioneered in the Netherlands, the Village aims to set a new gold standard in long-term care for people with declining memories. Rather than clinical, hospital-like spaces, it is meant to be reminiscent of the neighbourhoods the residents have left behind, making the transition to a nursing facility less disorienting, alienating or anxiety inducing, common issues for those with dementia. Langley is a suburban locale, but “if we had built this in a more urban setting,” Village architect […]

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