CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

General Session details to be announced soon. All badge types are welcome.

Keynote details to be announced soon. All badge types are welcome.

A tour of Sagewood, a continuing care retirement community on 85 acres in North Phoenix.  Sagewood is an amenity rich retirement community with approximately 417 independent living units, 78 skilled nursing beds, 44 assisted living apartments, and 30 memory care apartments.  The tour will feature resort style amenities, dining venues, common areas, meeting spaces, wellness/fitness, outdoor activities, and a large auditorium.  The desert landscape and architecture will be featured throughout the tour. 

Learning Objectives:

• Analyze architectural design related to the desert climate and landscape.
• Explore the Southwestern design principles and the relevancy they hold 15 years later.
• Reflect on emerging trends and the future of desert architectural design.
• Assess the current design and its impact to the culture of a senior living community.

Led by an interior design professor, this hands-on interactive workshop will allow participants to examine the performance criteria for furniture, fixtures, and equipment (FF&E) used within senior living projects. Participants will put materials samples to the test in a variety of scenarios to understand how best to specify products for a range of users, settings, and maintenance practices/standards. Attendees will be provided with a box of samples to evaluate during this portion of the workshop.

 
Additionally, the workshop will help attendees develop a deeper understanding of how differently abled users engage with the built environment to help foster empathy in design and materials selection. Come ready to identify the range of abilities that must be considered within any senior living setting and how those abilities influence product procurement.

Formatted for both newcomers to the field, including students, as well as active professionals who would benefit from an update on current FF&E offerings, performance metrics, etc., this workshop will equip participants with immediately applicable strategies to introduce to their design process.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the significance of experience- and application-based learning in the design process.
• Engage in empathy-based exercises to understand differently abled users' experiences of the built environment.
• Actively evaluate FF&E performance criteria and characteristics.
• Analyze and evaluate empathy and performance characteristics as a component of experience-based learning that can be applied to the design process.

Sponsored By: Wolf-Gordon

Join us inside the Expo Hall for drinks, hors d’oeuvres while networking, perusing booths, and catching up with your favorite vendors. All badge types are welcome.

Sponsored by: Rock House Designer Brands

As dining venues continue to evolve into vital hubs for social connection and community identity, design teams face the dual challenge of delivering appealing environments and high-end aesthetics alongside rigorous operational efficiency. Join a panel of industry experts and winners from EFA’s annual Dining Competition as they dive into recent award-winning projects, share valuable lessons learned, and offer a forward-looking perspective on the trends shaping the next generation of senior living dining experiences.  

All badge types are welcome

If you’ve never attended EFA or are new to senior living, this casual, hosted meet-up during the welcome reception is your place to start!  

Join fellow first-timers, career-changers, and emerging professionals for relaxed conversation and easy introductions designed to help you find your people. Members of the editorial board, the EFA event team, and seasoned attendees will also be on hand to share insights, answer questions, and help make connections. 

Come as you are, stay as long as you like, and leave with a few friendly faces to explore the show with!  

All badge types are welcome.

All badge types are welcome

If we want to create, innovate, and collaborate in fresh ways, we need to tap into the power of play—which is for everyone, not just for kids. In this talk, award-winning toy designer and educator Cas Holman illustrates how play is a fundamental element of creativity. Using examples from her own design work and decades of observing and facilitating play, she explains how play inspires unexpected outcomes and allows for new discoveries that might otherwise be unreachable or seem impossible. Her approach has helped teams reframe their understanding of their goals and create new approaches and processes to evaluate and achieve them. She’s already brought her workshops to the likes of Nike, Ford, and Disney Imagineering, helping them integrate the benefits of play into their work. A keen observer of human behavior, Cas’s insights make her a go-to for teams looking to energize their process and reframe corporate habits.  All badge types are welcome.

As consumer preferences evolve, many are moving away from traditional, age-segregated Life Plan Communities toward intergenerational models that foster authentic and dynamic connections across age groups. This session explores how communities can proactively embrace this shift-blending residential, care, and community resources to create vibrant, inclusive environments. Putting Intergenerational Planning into Practice: Attendees will gain practical strategies for embedding intergenerational principles into both large-scale master plans and smaller-scale projects. Presenters will share practical guidelines for incorporating intergenerational elements-using many of the traditional programming and financing metrics, but reimagined through a new lens for development, design, and operations. Seeing the Concepts in Action: Take a deep dive into how Three Pillars Senior Living Communities is expanding its residential offerings to provide more diverse lifestyle offerings to both senior and non-senior users. This real-world case study will illustrate how intentional placemaking, phased implementation, and mission-aligned amenities-such as a Cognitive Resource Center and workforce housing-can bring intergenerational values to life while enhancing long-term community sustainability.