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Senior living architecture and interior design

We create places where elders flourish.

Hospitality-trained architects who have completed 45 senior living communities across the country.

Independent LivingAssisted LivingMemory Care

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  • 45 senior living communities completed
  • 4,777 resident units
  • 4.5M square feet of senior living
  • Since 2008 helping owners and operators redefine senior living
Care types
Independent living, assisted living and memory care
What we do
Planning workshops, feasibility, entitlement, architecture, interiors and virtual reality
Offices
St. Louis, Missouri and Denver, Colorado
Latest completion
Holliday Farms Senior Living, Zionsville, Indiana. 157 residences, August 2026.

People

Meet the architects who care about serving you.

Every project Principal led from the first workshop to the final walkthrough.

  • Peter Schwartz

    Founding Partner

    AIA | NCARB | LEED AP

  • Brian Van Winkle

    Founding Partner

    AIA | NCARB

  • Lindsay Straatmann

    Principal

    AIA | NCARB | LEED GA

Where we come from

Hospitality forward design.

We started in hospitality, designing for Marriott. We bring that mindset to elder care.

We take extra care to apply every lesson learned to the next set of drawings.

In their words

  • “Vessel has consistently met, and exceeded, our expectations… they also offer an important intangible: they are enjoyable to work with.”
    Mike Longfellow Spectrum Retirement
  • “Our newest memory care communities, Michael and Gabriel, align with Cardinal Ritter Senior Services’ values of providing dignity, hospitality, service, excellence, compassion and joy. With beautiful and easily accessible common areas, exposure to natural lighting and carefully selected wayfinding architecture, our memory care residents live a full life with dignity and joy.”
    Chris Baechle CEO, Cardinal Ritter Senior Services
  • “Getting to be involved in the overall design process early on led us to be able to incorporate some new styles and pieces that played nicely with the building.”
    Erin Hellmann Senior Vice President, Dover Development

How we work

You are in the room, every step.

Virtual reality

A client team member in a VR headset walks through a senior living design while a colleague gestures toward the project renderings on the wall.

See it before you build it.

Clients walk their future community in virtual reality at every major design milestone. It starts as a white box and ends as the finished building, so surprises are found on screen, not on site.

The lobby shown as a white-box model The same lobby with finishes and lighting The same lobby with furniture and art A photograph of the finished Algonquin lobby with a stone fireplace, a mezzanine and the reception desk

Algonquin lobby. Drag from white box to the finished building.

Services

We can help before the first line is drawn.

Whether you are deciding if a site works or ready to break ground, we meet you where you are.

  • Project planning workshops
  • Feasibility studies
  • Masterplanning
  • Entitlement
  • Programming
  • Owner’s representation
  • Interior design
  • Virtual reality

Our work

Featured communities

We create places where people want to experience life.

see all of our senior living work

Our thinking

Worth a read

Contact

Let’s talk about your community.

Tell us a little about what you are planning, and a real person from our team will get back to you.

We will only use your details to follow up about your project.