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| A Laguna Honda nursing team poses at the site of our new buildings. |
Laguna Honda’s extensive renovation and replacement is a significant step on a journey from institution to community. The 500,000 square feet of new construction and 150,000 square feet of remodeling help to move one of the nation’s largest single-site skilled nursing and rehabilitation facilities toward a model of care that emphasizes community-building.
The community orientation of the new Laguna Honda is evident in numerous features of the physical plant. The rehabilitation center, which will double its capacity from 30 to 60 residents, reflects an emphasis on therapeutic interventions to help people with disabilities gain functionality and transition to community living.
The 750 residents of the skilled nursing facility will live in 15-person households, each with its own living room. Two households will share a dining room. Each bedroom will have operable windows and spectacular views opening out onto the natural beauty of the Laguna Honda campus. Bedrooms will be grouped into suites with shared bathrooms, and seven different floor plans will provide a diversity of room arrangements. Every four households will constitute a distinct neighborhood.
The broad and light-filled central connecting corridor joining the three new buildings to one another and to the campus’ remaining 1920s-era Spanish Revival buildings is conceived of as an esplanade, the kind of human-scale thoroughfare that invites conviviality and interchange in its shops and cafes. The esplanade will indeed feature a café and a small store for necessities and gifts, as well as a library, a cafeteria, an art studio, a beauty and barber shop, and gathering spots at an outdoor patio and around an indoor bamboo garden and aviary featuring tropical birds selected by the San Francisco Zoo.
The intent of a design that opens out onto the Laguna Honda parkland and replicates a small town feel is to emphasize the elements of Laguna Honda that make it a community of care, and to unequivocally integrate it into the broader civic life of San Francisco, an objective that will be served as well by bringing other city residents onto the Laguna campus for music, lectures, and art exhibits in the renovated Gerald Simon Theatre.
The design concept, a joint venture by Anshen+Allen Architects and Stantec Architecture, was to balance warmth, tradition and history with invention, technology and an optimism for the future. It was important to respect the historical significance of the campus, which is a centuries-old landmark in San Francisco, while accommodating the expansion and growth of the hospital’s evolving mission into the 21st century.
Materials selected were chosen to reaffirm the idea. The stone of the original buildings is juxtaposed by aluminum, stainless-steel treatments in addition to many kinds of glazing. Materials, textures and finishes play against each other (wood and limestone against plaster and concrete, curves contrasting sharp lines) to represent past and present while celebrating the value of the therapeutic community. The end result is a fluid, modern design that is a classic expression of contemporary California.
The new Laguna Honda was designed and constructed to a achieve a sense of place that honors tradition and forges new relationships, in particular among the San Franciscans who call it home and those who live all across the city.
