The average nursing home can be depressingly institutional. For the growing number of people suffering from dementia, these facilities are even worse: Their repetitive architecture makes it easy to get lost, and they look nothing like the places where patients have lived their entire lives. The Copenhagen-based firm Nord Architects is building a series of centers for patients with Alzheimer’s and dementia that feel more like villages or cities, rather than bleak institutions. The necessity of these kinds of facilities that are specifically designed for people with dementia is rising. Between 2000 and 2015, the number of deaths from dementia and Alzheimer’s has risen 123%. In the United States alone, one in three elderly people die from these diseases, and in 2018 cost the country $288 billion. As the number of people with dementia grows, some care centers are shifting away from institutional architecture and towards village-based designs.