A number of trends in our society contribute to a growing incompatibility between people and their housing. The average household composition in the United States is becoming increasingly varied as our society becomes more diverse. The traditional household makeup has expanded to include elderly relatives, caregivers and unrelated adults. The rapidly aging American population and longer life expectancies are leading to a greater number of people with physical disabilities. Additionally, housing prices are high for new buyers, while many empty nesters have more space than they need. Unfortunately, conventional housing stock generally does not respond to these problems.
Such trends demand a new approach to designing environments , which would better accommodate peoples’ changing situations and their varying abilities. By designing flexibility into homes from the beginning, it is possible to reduce one’s need to move to a new home and also prevent or postpone an elderly person’s premature move to an institution. By designing a home’s layout and structure to allow for a number of varied floor plans, it may be easily modified when the need arises. This approach would reduce potential remodeling costs and waste in the future, and increase the marketability of the home.
NEW APPROACH TO HOUSING
Many elderly people are forced to enter an institution prematurely simply because their own homes are unable to accommodate the disabilities they develop. Design of a home must take into account the fact that the occupants’ abilities will vary over their lifetime. Disabilities can come at any time, and the home must be able to accommodate them. Some disabilities are temporary such as sports injuries, while others are permanent. Regardless of the duration of the disability, a well-designed environment can improve the quality of life of the occupant.
Housing is too frequently designed for the “average” person with “average” physical ability when, in reality, few people meet this description of “average”. People range greatly in size and physical and mental abilities, and they experience many changes throughout their lives. When designing a house, designers tend to respond to a “snapshot” of the client as he or she looks today, and they forget to allow for changes in the client’s physical ability and lifestyle over time. Good design should accommodate all users, and when all users are taken into account equally from the beginning, rather than as an afterthought, the resulting design can be intelligent, sensitive, exciting, and non-exclusive.
UNIVERSAL DESIGN
“Universal design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design.” (Mace, 1991). While this is true on the micro level ...
