Assessing an existing home for its level of dementia-friendliness is made easier with a new App called IRIDIS. It was devised by researchers at Sterling University. Most people think dementia is about memory loss, but this is only part of the story. Visual perception is a major factor in getting out and about and around the home. Colour contrasts and lighting become more important for people with dementia along with any other health conditions they might have. An article from UK on Homecare.co.uk webpage has more. The IRIDIS App can be found on Google Play and Apple Store. It is useful for family members and professionals alike.
Category: Housing research
Age-Friendly Housing Resources
RIBA’s book, Age-Friendly Housing: Future design for older people, is about anticipating the needs of older generations. It is available for purchase from UK.
“This book embeds the principles of how we should approach the design of future housing for an ageing population, reminding us that this is not about `other people’, but about each of us.
This book focuses on anticipating the needs and aspirations of the next generation of older people, and touches on what this implies for our communities, our towns and our cities, as well as for our living spaces.It will look at how well-designed buildings can facilitate the provision of care, support independence and wellbeing while providing companionship and stimulation. It will also examine how to ensure that buildings remain flexible over a long life.
Dealing mainly with new-build, but with a section on adaptation and refurbishment, this book sets out the underlying design principles that should be applied and the early decisions that must be taken. Richly illustrated with case studies alongside contributions from a range of experts and examples of best practice, this comprehensive resource will inform and empower architects, designers, planners and clients to be braver and wiser in designing with older people in mind.”
See also lists of design-related resources relating to age friendly and accessible housing: Design Hub – Building homes and communities,
It pays to be sustainable and inclusive
Interesting results are reported in an engineering and mathematics research paper from Europe on the costs of including both sustainability and inclusive design thinking in dwellings. All costs involved in constructing a home were taken into account: materials, labour, construction, and the running and maintenance costs of sub-components over the entire life-cycle of a home, which is a nominal fifty year period. The authors claim that by taking the cost savings due to efficiency and adaptability of the home, there is a 23.35% reduction in overall costs. Therefore it makes sense to take this path for cost reasons alone: “If it were not for any other reason, like protecting the environment or caring for [people with disability] and for our comfort, there would still be a valid point in using these materials and technologies from the costs’ point of view”. The paper includes graphs and detailed calculation tables. The title of the paper is “Techniques for ensuring cost savings and environment protection in buildings” and is published in Applied Mathematics, Mechanics, and Engineering Vol. 61, Issue IV, November 2018.
Teaching and learning UD in real time
Cork County Council in Ireland has provided an excellent opportunity for second year architecture students to get some hands on practice and expand their design thinking. In Kevin Busby and Jim Harrison’s paper, Universal Design in Architectural Education – Community Liaison on ‘Live Projects‘, they report on imaginative examples of student responses to the challenges of integrating age-friendly features in housing. They also report on the learning gained from observing students and finding out the main design difficulties they found in the process. Illustrations demonstrate some of the ideas. Good to see students operating in the real world and making a difference.
The article is from the proceedings of the UDHEIT 2018 conference held in Dublin, Ireland, an open access publication.
Home Coming? Yes it’s possible
This article from Penny Galbraith was written when the Australian Building Codes Board called for responses to their Options Paper on Accessible Housing. The title of Penny’s paper presented at the recent UD Conference in Ireland is, Home Coming? A Story of Reassurance, Opportunity and Hope for Universally Designed Housing in Australia. Using facts and figures, she challenges the many false assumptions that the industry and others hold about the need for universal design in housing. She also covers assumptions about costs. So yes, it’s possible.
Paper Abstract
This paper shows the complexity of housing and how it is the linch-pin for achieving economic, social and human rights imperatives. In Australia there are no minimum housing standards; the effect is now critical. In October 2017, a regulatory impact assessment was instructed, to consider Livable Housing Australia’s Silver and Gold standards, for inclusion in the National Construction Code. A substantial research project provided a knowledge and evidence base of the policy perspective; an expanded statistical context; and detailed analyses of Silver, Gold and Platinum design levels.
The policy perspective included greater economic focus. The effect on productivity, directly attributable to housing, is significant. 34 specific policy ‘problems’ were identified that could be solved or mitigated if acceptable standards of housing were introduced. It is reassuring that universal design has permeated all levels of government policy. The statistical context explored demographics, households, dwelling types; tenure; occupants; disability and carers. Detailed analyses challenged many common assumptions and re-framed accessible housing into a mainstream problem.
73% of all dwellings are separate houses and the average home has 3.1 bedrooms. There are tremendous opportunities for universally design-led mainstream solutions. The compliance gap analyses show which design features might cost more; have potential to be designed out; or be cost neutral. Many design features are cost neutral and arguably should be included within mandated standards. As there is a minimal gap between universal design standards and current housing, there is hope that all Australians will, one day, live in a universally designed home.
The article is from the proceedings of the UDHEIT 2018 conference held in Dublin, Ireland, an open access publication.
Flexible housing offsets risk
The current standard design ideas for homes goes back more than a century. It’s time for a rethink on home design to suit the way we live our lives now is the claim in an article by Kirsty Voltz in The Conversation.
Home designs are not keeping up with societal changes that include affordability, size of homes, accessibility across the lifespan, and designing so that as lives change, the interior of the home can adapt to suit.
The risks are in not recognising the need to change and adapt to current circumstances, lifestyles, societal changes and personal aspirations. The article contains links to other references and concludes, “Existing housing stock is designed around the numbers of bedrooms and bathrooms that appeal to the market and so fails to be responsive to what people need from housing in the 21st century.”
The picture is of the 3 bedroom home that Kirsty Voltz designed to fit in the space of an obsolete driveway.
UD Conference Housing Presentations
Three housing presentations focused on universally designed and accessible housing and discuss the need for regulation in the building code.
Margaret Ward tells the story from the perspective of Australian Network for Universal Housing Design (ANUHD) and their advocacy and lobbying for regulation. Universal design in all new housing: Keeping COAG to account (PDF 13MB). Transcript of the presentation in Word.
Courtney Wright reports on a survey about accessible housing and attitudes to regulation, costs and benefits to Australian society. Building all new homes to an agreed universal design standard: Understanding the perceived costs and benefits to Australian society. (PDF 500kb). Transcript of the presentation in Word.
Penny Galbraith gives a policy perspective and links it to Population, Participation and Productivity. She provides some interesting facts and figures including how costs can be designed out. Home Coming? A story of reassurance, opportunity and hope. (PDF 1MB). Transcript of the presentation in Word.
All presentations were converted to PDF before being provided to CUDA. If you are unable to access the content of the documents please email udaustralia@gmail.com.
Relationship between housing and health
By undertaking a systematic review of the literature, Janet Ige and colleagues in UK found there is a strong association between housing and health. However, it is not clear that there is a causal link and their article argues that more research needs to be done. The team found more than 7,000 studies on the topic, with 39 matching their criteria for analysis. Findings showed that housing refurbishment and modifications, provision of adequate heating, improvements to ventilation and water supply were associated with improved respiratory outcomes, quality of life and mental health. The title of the article is, The relationship between buildings and health: a systematic review, and this can be downloaded from the Journal of Public Health, or you can download the PDF directly.
Abstract: Background – The built environment exerts one of the strongest directly measurable effects on physical and mental health, yet the evidence base underpinning the design of healthy urban planning is not fully developed.
Method: This study provides a systematic review of quantitative studies assessing the impact of buildings on health. In total, 7127 studies were identified from a structured search of eight databases combined with manual searching for grey literature. Only quantitative studies conducted between January 2000 and November 2016 were eligible for inclusion. Studies were assessed using the quality assessment tool for quantitative studies.
Results: In total, 39 studies were included in this review. Findings showed consistently that housing refurbishment and modifications, provision of adequate heating, improvements to ventilation and water supply were associated with improved respiratory outcomes, quality of life and mental health. Prioritization of housing for vulnerable groups led to improved wellbeing. However, the quality of the underpinning evidence and lack of methodological rigour in most of the studies makes it difficult to draw causal links.
Conclusion: This review identified evidence to demonstrate the strong association between certain features of housing and wellbeing such as adequate heating and ventilation. Our findings highlight the need for strengthening of the evidence base in order for meaningful conclusions to be drawn.
Universal design for a social and sustainable life
The word “sustainability” mostly conjures up notions of clean and green, but social sustainability – an aspect just as important – has been left out of mainstream discussions. This point is made in Universal Design as a Significant Component for Sustainable Life and Social Development.
The authors argue that both home and neighbourhood need to be considered for a socially sustainable environment. An evolving criteria for social sustainability is access to facilities and amenities that are vital for people to run errands and do all the everyday things.
Going to the shops, a medical appointment, or the cinema should be available to all no matter their age or circumstances. There are useful explanatory graphs in this in-depth paper that emphasises well-being, safety and accessibility. The authors sum up in the conclusion, “The social aspect of sustainability should be emphasized in the mainstream discussion on sustainability because it influences human behaviour and quality of life in many ways”. They also point out that it is environmentally unsustainable to build homes that need major modifications, “which causes pollution, hazardous construction equipment and material and inappropriate methods of wastage removal”. The article can also be found in Asian Journal of Environment-Behaviour Studies.
Abstract
Universally designed environment provides comfort, adaptability and flexibility that can help to reduce human life cycle impact and encourage residents’ participation in the community. With that, the purpose of this conceptual study is to explore the concept of Universal Design (UD) as a significant aspect of social sustainability, based on professional practitioners’ and scholarly views. UD implementation in built environment may cater the needs of diverse users over the changing abilities throughout lifespan. This study concludes that UD has evolved as a significant component for sustainable life and social development within the individual’s own dwelling and the community as well.
Housing quality improves health
Ever wondered what the long term effects of a home modification are? A longitudinal study from the UK shows that household improvements in social housing can reduce risk of hospital stays, particularly in older people.
While the study picks up major improvements in chest and heart health, it also found that falls and burns were reduced too.
Over the ten years of the study, they found that homes that were modified and upgraded correlated with reduced hospital events. That means savings in the health budget or beds freed up for other patients. Obviously it is better for occupants too.
It is not clear how poor the condition of the housing was prior to the upgrade or modification relative to Australian housing.One key finding was: “Using up to a decade of household improvements linked to individual level data, we found that social housing quality improvements were associated with substantial reductions in emergency hospital admissions for cardiovascular conditions, respiratory conditions, and fall and burn injuries.”
The title of the study is, “Emergency hospital admissions associated with a non-randomised housing intervention meeting national housing quality standards: a longitudinal data linkage study”. Sarah Rodgers et al. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
Universal Design drives Housing Quality
Although there have been fundamental changes in the building code and regulations in Norway, it seems that none of this has guaranteed improvements in quality on the usability of homes. Perhaps there are some lessons for Australia when it comes to implementing the new building code for housing in 2022.
In a research study, the authors conclude that architects, more than any other group in the construction industry are trained to break conventional frameworks. How the regulations are applied by users is the key to success – this is where the education of architects and building designers comes in.
Architects are often willing to innovate, the authors claim. “One chief intention of the building code is to promote universal design in the built environment. It seems that the appending regulations may not follow up the intention as it could be expected. Amendments are probably needed and should be based on a broader view on the design process.”
The title of the article is, Universal Design as a Booster for Housing Quality and Architectural Practice. It seems we could learn from this experience – regulations are one thing, but applying them appropriately and for maximum effect is another. The abstract gives a good overview of the project.