Cooperwood Senior Living is an 80-unit, 76,000-square-foot assisted and memory-care living community sited on the southern portion of a 16-acre site in Flowood, Mississippi. The senior living complex is the first phase of the masterplan for the property which incorporates walkable commercial and retail spaces. The symbiotic planning will include healthcare, dining, and shopping provisions for the assisted living residents and the local community.

The senior living project embraces, and partially bridges a creek that runs through the site. This posture provides resident rooms with secluded landscaped views and offers vegetative filtration plantings for the stream. The bridge-building between the residential wings provides an outdoor patio, dining/café, theater, and wellness spaces for both active and passive activities. The memory care portion provides a continuous circulation route allowing the residents to always make their way home, as well as an internal landscaped courtyard for outdoor adventures within a secure environment.

The design of the Cooperwood assisted living complex is a search for a more meaningful and lively home environment. This project did not cost any more than its competitors. The goal was to rethink the institutional typology; the materials were free, light, air, proportion, color, shape, and pattern. The project started as a reconsideration of normal units, where retiring residents would spend large portions of their day and night. The economically limited size units were reshaped to be dynamic and dimensionally open by breaking the normal four-square rooms with spayed exterior walls. The inside and out were connected with large windows strategically located to animate the interior and offer enticing views. The large institutional building was remade into houses. The shape and structure of the building, uniting the room exterior walls and houses, offered the opportunity for a dynamic balance and concurrence of formal strategies. The faceted exterior with sunshades changing in the sunlight helps this new complex feel alive and have both a familiar and unfamiliar presence, which the designers considered an example of uncanny form.

Duvall Decker was assisted by Waggoner Engineering, Engineering Resource Group, Inc, Spencer-Engineers, Inc, Jon D Rice & Associates, LLC, Terracon, and WAS Design.

Awards
2023 Architect’s Newspaper Best of Design Award – Editor’s Pick
2023 AIA National Design for Aging Review Award
2023 American Architecture Award
2023 AIA Mississippi Merit Award

Publications
Architect’s Newspaper, Studio Visit, 2023
Architect’s Newspaper, Best of 2023, 2023