Cooperwood Senior Living
Cooperwood Senior Living is an 80-unit, 76,783-square-foot assisted and memory-care living community located on the southern portion of a 16-acre site in Flowood, Mississippi. The senior living complex is the first phase of a masterplan that incorporates walkable commercial and retail spaces, creating a symbiotic environment with healthcare, dining, and shopping provisions for both residents and the local community.
The project embraces a creek running through the site, providing resident rooms with secluded landscaped views and vegetative filtration plantings for the stream. A bridge connects the residential wings, offering an outdoor patio, dining/café, theater, and wellness spaces for active and passive activities. The memory care portion features a continuous circulation route, ensuring residents can always find their way home, along with an internal landscaped courtyard for secure outdoor adventures.
The design rethinks the institutional typology, using materials like light, air, proportion, color, shape, and pattern to create a dynamic and lively home environment without increasing costs. Units were reshaped to break the traditional four-square layout, using spayed exterior walls and large windows to connect inside and out, offering enticing views and animating the interior. The building’s structure and faceted exterior with sunshades create a familiar yet uncanny presence, transforming the complex into a series of "houses."
Duvall Decker collaborated with Waggoner Engineering, Engineering Resource Group, Inc, Spencer-Engineers, Inc, Jon D Rice & Associates, LLC, Terracon, and WAS Design.
Awards
- 2024 AIA National Housing Award
- 2024 Mississippi State University S|ARC Alumni Design Honor Award
- 2023 The 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
- The Architect’s Newspaper, Studio Visit, 2023
- The Architect’s Newspaper, Best of 2023, 2023
- Design for Aging Review Awards, 17th Edition Supplement, 2024