Fayetteville : UA architects’ housing design earns accolades
Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Thirty years ago the statewide denominations of the Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist and Presbyterian churches joined forces to help fill a need for low-cost housing in central Arkansas.
The result was Little Rock’s Good Shepherd Ecumenical Retirement Community, which houses about 410 senior citizens in 395 residential units.
Now a master plan to add 1, 500 units to the 160-acre campus has won a national accolade.
The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s Community Design Center is one of eight North American architectural firms featured in the January edition of Architect Magazine. Center staff were in New York City on Jan. 24 to receive the magazine’s Progressive Architecture Design Citation, part of a 54-year tradition to honor innovative architectural designs that haven’t been built.
Four designs won Progressive Architecture Design Awards and four won citations. They were selected from as many as 300 submissions, said Stephen Luoni, director of the UA Community Design Center.
“It’s pretty competitive,” Luoni said.
J. Mark Davis, chief executive officer of the Good Shepherd center, has been involved with the expansion’s design since its inception. It calls for a variety of housing types and amenities to attract residents age 60 to 100 and expand the four-building campus into a vibrant community, he said.
“That is really the magic of what they’ve done,” Davis said.
Good Shepherd is a 1970 sstyle retirement center where the average age of residents is about 86. Units range from studios to two-bedroom apartments.
Recognizing a growing need for more low-cost senior housing, Good Shepherd’s board of directors commissioned a study four years ago from the UA center, paid for with the help of the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation.
The study examined multiple aspects including transportation and the types of facilities needed. It was done under former UA center director David Glasser with the help of housing expert Michael Pyatok of Oakland, Calif. “That really became the foundation for design of the master plan,” Luoni said. The design includes various types of housing including condominiums, houses, and highrise and garden-style apartments with outside entrances to each unit. There are also parks, wide walkways, plazas and centers for retail and office space. Davis said the plan will guide expansion at Good Shepherd over the next 20-40 years as the need for housing grows. There were about 463, 481 Arkansas residents age 62 and over as of July 2005, and that number is projected to grow to 766, 906 by 2030, according to U. S. Census Bureau projections. “The demand is just going to get greater and greater,” Davis said.
To contact this reporter: cpark@arkansasonline. com
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