Huntersville Oaks Skilled Nursing Facility
Huntersville, NC

RPA Design, in collaboration with Lantz – Boggio Architects, worked to design a new concept in senior care for the Huntersville Oaks Nursing Facility. The facility represents an emerging “neighborhood” approach to skilled nursing facilities and is one of the first to be implemented in the eastern part of the country.

The design concept creates two households in each of the four neighborhoods, each with a specific design theme. This allows residents to live, eat, relax, and visit within their neighborhood. Each of the four neighborhoods is connected via “Main Street” which provides shopping (gift shop), eating (Café), and other activities and services ( chapel, multipurpose room, physical therapy gym, and beauty salon) and even a visiting area complete with a children’s indoor park, play area and “gingerbread cottage”. Resident bedrooms are warm and friendly with private ADA accessible toilets in each. They have built-in wardrobes, desks, and a built-in bench that sits nestled under a large picture window overlooking manicured lawns and gardens.

Names for each of the neighborhoods were created by the management staff with themes that supported those names. As the finish and furniture packages were developed by the design team, purposeful attention and care was given to each individual selection so that it would support and reinforce the theme of that particular neighborhood from the finishes to the furniture, to the artwork and accessories.

Each neighborhood was designed to reinforce wayfinding and help residents, some of whom have various stages of dementia, find their neighborhood and their rooms easily. Wayfinding is continually reinforced through signage, artwork and in other subtle ways so that residents can freely wander the entire facility and fine their way “home” quite easily.