When designing Bend, Oregon-based Sunshine Retirement Living’s Park View Estates, an assisted living and memory care facility adjacent to Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center in Orange County, California, Lantz-Boggio Architects & Interior Designers immersed the 145 units in a setting that nods to both Spanish Colonial Revival and California Mediterranean aesthetics. Here, there is a welcoming archway at the entry, stucco walls, and earthy, reddish tiles cladding the roof.

Magnifying the outdoors throughout was essential to the Englewood, Colorado- and Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based firm, which incorporated several courtyards with gardens and walking paths into the layout. In the assisted living wing, for example, there is an enclosed area complete with a gazebo that is ideal for family get-togethers; in memory care there are fountains as well as ample space to exercise.

All of the first-floor assisted living units face the courtyard and have direct access to the outdoors, providing residents with their own healing patches of lush landscaping that they conveniently don’t have to tend to. An automatic lighting system in the memory care neighborhood also helps positively influence circadian rhythms.

The interiors are just as airy with a reception area reminiscent of a country club, a light-filled lounge that opens onto a courtyard, and in the dining room, where residents choose from diner-style booth bench seating or tables for two, four, or six people, floor-to-ceiling windows let in the sunshine and provide courtyard views.   Living units, with their high ceilings and large, open windows, follow suit.

Lantz-Boggio was also careful to add homey touches to Park View Estates, integrating photos of familiar local landmarks and landscapes, dressing up the movie theater with a retro popcorn machine and framed film posters, and filling interactive rooms with books and Scrabble wall boards.

A version of this article was originally published by Environments for Aging.