Cooperwood Senior Living

Project highlights: Cooperwood Senior Living

• Architect: Duvall Decker
• Location: Flowood, Mississippi
• Category: Merit

This affordable 80-unit assisted living and memory care community in central Mississippi reimagines a growing housing typology. Neither an institution nor a big “house” filled with minimal units, the project is architecture for people whose lives are fully integrated into the environment and community. It offers its residents a sense of belonging, bolstered by the developer’s desire to serve a growing senior community.

The site was originally purchased at auction by a father and son developer team in the mid-1990s, and, over more than two decades, the community surrounding the site thrived. As the population aged, the developers reflected on their personal experiences caring for elderly family members and their dismay with institutional facilities or extremely expensive senior centers. With those experiences in mind, Cooperwood Senior Living embraces and condenses two scales of home and community into a vibrant living environment that is both familiar and surprising.

The project’s siting embraces and improves a preexisting drainage ditch that flows through the site. What originally presented as a challenging condition has been transformed into a landscaped pond and natural habitat, which is surrounded by a unique senior development comprising residential wings on the east and west that are linked by a central community building.

Cooperwood Senior Living was conceived as a full living environment that includes private units and numerous delightful public spaces—outdoor patio space, a cafe, a theater, and a salon —that overlook the water. All of the project’s residential units face east or west, and each includes multiple large windows that offer views of the sunrise or sunset. They’re protected from the South’s hot sun by shades that shelter the interior from heat and glare and simultaneously reflect light back onto the project’s faceted facade. By opening the interior to views of the water, ducks, songbirds, and other seasonal fauna, Cooperwood’s residents are presented with a sense of discovery.

The developer wanted the facility to remain financially feasible for middle- and lower-income families, which shaped a limited construction budget. The team’s economical choices for every design and construction decision allowed the project to be realized for less than $237 per square foot.