The winners' circle.

The competition for Contemporary Long Term Care's 16th annual Order of Excellence awards may have been its stiffest yet. In the end, the jury chose five winners from a pool of nearly 50 entries sent in from long term care communities across the U.S. and even one unique project from outside of the nation: a nursing home in Australia created out of an old hops factory.

Jury members convened in early May at Contemporary's New York offices to review the entries. Jury Chair Victor Regnier says that though the jury can generally weed out many projects in a preliminary pass over the entries, this year that was harder than ever.

The projects as a whole represented a broad cross section of the country, coming from urban and suburban areas as well as small towns. More than half of the submissions came from assisted living communities. Ultimately, the jury chose winners from all walks of long term care: retirement housing, a nursing home, two assisted living centers, and a hospice. The judges' comments were taped and edited to run on the following pages.

Once again, kudos went to projects that feature residential environments, unique architecture that blends well into the community and makes use of its natural surroundings, and interiors that use space creatively to benefit residents and staff.

Portions of 10 other submissions are also highlighted this year as best practices examples. While these projects did not win formal awards in this year's competition, the jurors singled them out for noteworthy or innovative aspects of their architectural or interior design such as one facility that capitalized on the emerging trend of clustering sections of a building and another that made significant renovations on a tight budget.

We hope you'll cull some good ideas from these facilities that you can put to work in your own. In the final analysis, the test of long term care facility design is not in how it looks but in how it works for its residents and staff. We'd love to hear your feedback on how the types of designs featured here are working in long term care. Please call, write, or e-mail your comments to Yvonne Parsons, 355 Park Ave. South, New York, NY 10010; Phone: [phone]; E-mail: [e-mail].

THE JUDGES

Victor Regnier. FAIA, the Order of Excellence jury chair, is professor of architecture and gerontology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. His book Assisted Living Housing for the Elderly: Design Innovations from the United States and Europe (John Wiley & Sons, 1997) won the Progressive Architecture Award for Architectural Research.

Audrey S. Weiner. DSW, is executive vice president and chief operating officer of The Jewish Home and Hospital in New York City. The former administrator of the Hebrew Home for the Aged in Riverdale, New York, she has spoken and published extensively on the topic of long term care.

Lorraine G. Hiatt. PhD, is an environmental psychologist and gerontologist based in New York City. The author of Nursing Home Renovation: Designed for Reform (Butterworth Architecture, 1991), she consults nationwide on facility planning, operations, and long term care architecture and interior design. She is especially interested in applying research on aging to effective design and practice.

L. Bradford Perkins. FAIA. AICP, is the founder of Perkins Eastman Architects in New York City. He has directed architectural projects for more than 40 geriatric, medical, assisted living, and special residential environments and has helped establish design prototypes for assisted living and long term care. He is widely recognized as an expert in design for aging populations.