Unlikely Inspiration

Necessity and her daughter, Invention.

Don't you hate blogs that start with a tired, old cliche?  I know I do.

I am from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Lancaster has a lot of barns.  Barns have doors that slide along a track.  Lancaster also has a lot of retirement communities.  I think you know where I am going here....  No?  Let me back up.

One of the biggest trends in the last 20 years is trying to get some privacy into shared, or double-occupancy nursing rooms.  This makes a lot of sense.  Shared rooms are much more economical, as that means building half as many bathrooms as private rooms.  But residents, family members, health care staff and even HIPPA, want some privacy for each individual occupant.  As square footage is king, any ways to improve privacy in tight spaces are at a premium.

I know nursing homes aren't "sexy" to architects.  But consider this is what we are trying to improve:

Typical "semi-Private" Nursing Bed - Unchanged from 1900 

Ideally, we would layout a new building to provide layouts that accommodate separate quarters for each resident, along with a common foyer that allowed for entry into the bathroom as well as the corridor.  Pretty straight forward, but this was not what most nursing rooms looked like in the early 1990's.  This was a big leap.  What's more, if you've ever worked in healthcare, you know that they hate pocket doors.  You can't clean the pockets, yet stuff can get back there, so there is a fear of infection, etc.  In our original plans, we used cubical curtains.  

State of the Art Circa 1990-something.  "Shared Room" takes the place of "Semi-Private.

What can we do to improve upon this?  Doors are the obvious answer, but how?  It turns out, we were able to convince the Health Department that "barn doors" are a hygienic alternative to pockets.  With a barn door, we get all the benefits of a pocket door and eliminate all the space a typical swinging door needs.  Did I mention that all these doors needed to be 3'-8" wide to be able to move the beds through them in an emergency?  Each room not only has its own space, but each bed has a window.  Not the case in the first example:  one resident gets proximity to a window, the other gets the bathroom door!

Saving space is particularly important in projects that combine additions that have the nice layout of the Shared Room, but also renovations that try to provide the same privacy in a space that wasn't designed for it.  Below is a sample reconfigured space - the exterior walls and corridor walls did not move:

Here we had two former traditional layouts combined but maintain privacy.

In the diagram above, barn doors can literally slide behind the dressers.  Swinging doors would not have worked at all.  The bathroom also uses a barn door.  In this instance, we were completely re-configuring the space "inside the box", but were able to provide similar privacy in the renovated space as in the brand new building.

But what if you have a double occupancy room which cannot be reconfigured substantially?  The diagram below is an example of that.  The alterations only include a dividing wall to create privacy.  But the space was so tight, that the openings into the rooms were forced into a 45 degree angle.  

Revised room with added privacy wall and sliding doors.

The intervention is minimal but we are left with a problem as to how to close off the private rooms.  The client was not satisfied with cubical curtains.  The door track required to open a sliding door at a 45 degree angle is not something that's off the shelf at Home Depot.  As we are not in the business of inventing door hardware, the Contractor and a local metal fabricator designed and built something that actually worked.  But that is only the first hurdle.  We had to get the health Department to sign off on it.  Did I mention that a floor track was forbidden?  The Contractor devised a track that ran along the wall to keep the door from flopping around.

A complete mocked up room and opening was built to demonstrate its performance.

Mock up - Half Open.  Or is it Half Closed?

Mock up - Mostly Closed.

Mock up - Track from Foyer Side.

Mock up - Track from Resident Side.

The door was approved and went on to be installed.  Between the modest renovation plans, tight spaces and an Owner who was unwilling to compromise, a brand new type of door was created.  We just don't have a name for it yet.  Any inspired suggestions?

Finished project - door in closed position.  Transom lights allow borrowed light into the foyer.

Finished project from the room side.

This post is part of the ArchiTalks series where a group of us (architects who also blog) all post on the same day and promote each other’s blogs. This month’s theme is "Unlikely Inspiration" and was led by Eric Faulkner.  A lot of other talented writers who also are architects are listed below and are worth checking out:

Lee Calisti, AIA - Think Architect (@LeeCalisti)
unlikely inspiration was there all along
Eric T. Faulkner - Rock Talk (@wishingrockhome)
Inspire -- A Clover
Jeffrey Pelletier - Board & Vellum (@boardandvellum)
Unlikely Inspiration: The Strange Journeys of the Creative Process
Mark Stephens - Mark Stephens Architects (@architectmark)
Unlikely Inspiration - Herbert Simms
Lora Teagarden - L² Design, LLC (@L2DesignLLC)
Unlikely inspiration
Michele Grace Hottel - Michele Grace Hottel, Architect (@mghottel)
"unlikely inspiration"
Tim Ung - Journey of an Architect (@timothy_ung)
Inspired by Leather Working
Steve Mouzon - The Original Green Blog (@stevemouzon)
A Most Unexpected Inspiration

What Was I Thinking?

Did you ever have one of those days in your early profession that made you second guess all of the decisions you had ever made up to that point?  I am sure every young architect has questioned his or her career path.  One day in particular comes to mind for me.  

Our office had just completed a very high-profile Seniors apartment that had received lots of awards, had gotten a lot of press in the trades, and was very high end.  It had three stories of apartments, each with a nice sized balcony.  What more could you ask for, right?

On the top level, there were several variations of balconies at that floor for the apartments.  Some were open trellises, others were covered with clear Plexiglas and some had a more traditional (solid) porch roof.  It seems that none of these options was exactly what the Client had in mind.  The residents with the solid roofs didn’t like that their balconies were darker than their neighbors', the residents without any covering didn’t like that their balconies got wet while others stayed dry, and the residents with the Plexiglas covering didn’t like that they could see debris on their roofs.  The Architect was called in to suggest some compromises.

A rendering of the Project.  Note some of the balconies are trellises, some have solid roofs.

One suggestion for the dark balconies was to paint the underside of the roof structure white instead of the dark green of the original design.  So instead of getting a painter to paint one of the balconies, an intern architect was dispatched with a knife, a box of white Foam Core sheets, a ruler, a cutting board and several tubes of Liquid Nails.  So there I was, in temperature and humidity both in the mid-90’s, on a resident's balcony. Standing on a ladder, I fitted squares of Foam Core into the coffers of the porch roof while trying to keep the sweat from burning my eyes.  I was miserable.  Having been part of a meeting prior to this exercise, I had been dressed in a coat and tie, not exactly appropriate for the task at hand.

Not only was the work undesirable, but the gracious gentleman who allowed me to enter his home and walk out on to his balcony had some memory issues.  He was also a retired military officer.  Though he was extremely accommodating when he first met me, in the time it took me to place the white Foam Core under his roof (I am guessing about two hours), he had kind of forgotten who I was.  When I reentered his living room, he didn't take kindly to me barging into his life and interrupting The Price Is Right.  I felt bad, but what could I do?  There was no other way off the third floor balcony!  I just apologized profusely and left his apartment as quickly as possible.

After I finished inserting the panels into the coffers, I was literally drenched.  My boss (and the person that assigned this task to me) was meeting elsewhere in the building, so I just found the nearest restroom and tried to dry out, wishing fiercely I had a change of clothing.  It was maybe the most uncomfortable I had ever been.  Forget hot yoga, try hot architecture.

I am told that the Liquid Nails gave way to the humidity over the summer, dropping the foam panels on the Major’s head every so often.  Days like those really made me question my sanity for entering the profession.  I am sure the Major would agree with that assessment.

This post is part of the ArchiTalks series where a group of us (architects who also blog) all post on the same day and promote each other’s blogs. This month’s theme is "What Was I Thinking" and was led by Cormac Phalen.  A lot of other talented writers who also are architects are listed below and are worth checking out:


Lora Teagarden - L² Design, LLC (@L2DesignLLC)
What was I thinking?

Eric T. Faulkner - Rock Talk (@wishingrockhome)

WWIT -- Convenience Kills!
Brian Paletz - The Emerging Architect (@bpaletz)
What was I thinking?
Jeffrey Pelletier - Board & Vellum (@boardandvellum)
What Was I Thinking? (Learning from Your Mistakes When Starting a Business)
Mark Stephens - Mark Stephens Architects (@architectmark)
What was I thinking!

Michele Grace Hottel - Michele Grace Hottel, Architect (@mghottel)
“what was i thinking?”
Jeremiah Russell, AIA - ROGUE Architecture (@rogue_architect)
what were we thinking: #architalks
Mark R. LePage - EntreArchitect (@EntreArchitect)
What Was I Thinking?
Cormac Phalen - Cormac Phalen (@archy_type)
What was I thinking?