Voices: Isaac Wallace, Market Sector Leader – Senior Living, ERDMAN

This article is sponsored by ERDMAN. In this Voices interview, Senior Housing News sits down with Isaac Wallace, Market Sector Leader – Senior Living, ERDMAN, to learn about the key trends, challenges and opportunities in senior living design. He shares best practices around senior living architecture and design that all senior living leaders should know, he also provides an outlook on the future of senior care environments.

Senior Housing News: What career experiences do you most draw from in your role today?

Isaac Wallace: I always go back to my time growing up on a farm. Coming from that environment, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. When you get to more challenging roles and new challenges arise, there’s no set path forward. I always had to find a way — if I didn’t have a tool that would work, I made the tool. If something broke, I had to find a way to get it done. That’s something that I think has driven me in my career all along the way.

Apart from that, I’ve gotten pretty lucky with getting to work with owners in the senior living industry that have a really deep respect for people. In the case of one of the first people I worked for, his parents lived in one of his communities, and every decision he made was through that lens. That stuck with me, and I still believe it’s about the people.

What drew you into senior living design, and what about the industry has kept you focused on this particular market?

My grandparents needed care at the end of their lives, and my first experiences were fairly negative, actually. We visited communities, and they weren’t places you wanted to be. When I first got into design, I didn’t think senior living was necessarily a place I wanted to focus, because despite the need, it didn’t seem like it’d be fun.

Then, ironically, coming out of school at a time when there were limited job opportunities, senior living was the one growing market. Once I got into it, I realized how great and personal it was. Instead of designing homes for prospective tenants who would be there for a couple of years, or designing commercial spaces that people might visit occasionally, I was creating a space for people to spend the rest of their lives.

Everything we do has such an impact, and it’s so interesting to hear the stories of the residents we meet and learn how personal everything is to them. The dining space is where they go eat dinner — not just once a week — but every day. Once you realize that, it really draws you in and makes you realize that there’s a need to make those spaces better and more authentic. We truly get the opportunity to impact people’s lives.

If you could wave a wand and instantly change one thing about the senior living industry, what would that be?

The stigma. It’s the thing that pushed me away at first. I would remove that and create a blank slate for senior living without preconceived notions.

If we could make that stigma go away, I think we could improve the interactions between senior communities and the surrounding neighborhoods, and improve getting people to come in and see the benefits of living in a senior care environment.

How do you believe you can make the greatest impact in this space and what puts you in a unique position to implement change?

For those of us in a front-end design role, we have an opportunity to impact all aspects of senior care from Day 1. We can have a positive impact on the people who work there and the people who are going to live there. We can also positively impact the neighbors around us.

At the beginning of the project, we may be thinking, “How can we get people to come work here?” We can intentionally design the space to enhance their working conditions, and take steps to improve staff workflow and increase efficiency. I think that’s what puts designers in a unique position.

Regarding maximizing design and minimizing cost, we strive to make the most of design choice early when the opportunity to change things results in minimal cost, whereas change later in the project has a much higher cost impact, and it takes a lot more effort.

Our ability to implement change goes beyond just project design. It goes all the way to helping with development choices and understanding the surrounding community as well. It’s all-encompassing.

Talk about a best practice or key takeaway around senior living architecture and design that you believe all senior living leaders should know.

At face value, I think anybody would agree with the term: The people matter. You can build an amazing building, but if you don’t have good people there, it won’t work, and you’re not going to have success. Everybody knows that. Over time, I’ve realized the role empathy plays in that equation. As much as we understand that people are important, how do we help those people?

How do we put ourselves in the shoes of the caregivers and community members to be able to be successful in our jobs? I sat through a seminar where they talked about how connected caregivers get to their residents and how much of an impact it has on them. I’ve always thought very highly of how these people work, but I never really thought about the impact of seeing people come and pass through their communities.

Empathy is not something that just happens overnight. It’s a muscle that you have to practice and grow. In our leadership team, we talk about how we can help develop empathy and bring it into our design role.

What empathy do you have for the people that you’re designing for? This includes both the residents and the care support team. Anybody who can find that perspective will design positive spaces based on a greater sense of connection with the people using the space they design.

What does the future hold for ERDMAN and senior care environments?

We are poised to have an impact on the intergenerational living model, which is something I’m personally interested in. Because we have a number of developments starting from initial concept, we have a unique ability to bring some components of intergenerational living into more traditional models without perfecting the model in a single shot.

Recently, rather than intergenerational, someone mentioned the idea of “invisible” senior living. I love that concept. It doesn’t necessarily have to be senior living — it’s just living. And because it’s intergenerational in nature, it’s not segregated.

Residents have all the care they need, but the stigma goes away because now they’re connected with the people they’re afraid of being removed from. I think ERDMAN’s in a spot where it can start to influence that change. I see that happening over the next few years.

Finish this sentence: “In the senior housing industry, 2023 will be the year of…”

…change out of necessity.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

ERDMAN is a national leader in health care and senior living strategy, design and implementation, creating positive, impactful solutions to build healthier communities throughout the country. To learn more about how ERDMAN can enhance your staff spaces, visit ERDMAN.com.

The Voices Series is a sponsored content program featuring leading executives discussing trends, topics and more shaping their industry in a question-and-answer format. For more information on Voices, please contact sales@agingmedia.com.

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