An obvious place to think about healing architecture is hospitals and health centres. The underpinning philosophy is that the physical environment can make a difference to the speed at which patients recover or adapt to acute and chronic conditions. Bindu Guthula discusses this using case studies from Germany, Denmark and Congo. Gardens and nature, colour and lighting, sounds and aromas are discussed by as well as the built environment. The article includes a checklist from the Center for Health Design for the built environment. This comprehensive article is in the Design for All Institute of India Newsletter (page 155). This international newsletter is a large document and all text is in bold type.
Category: Practice Guidelines for built environment
Wayfinding Design Guidelines
Wayfinding requires designers to organise and communicate the relationships of space in the environment. Basically, it is the naming and marking of places, identifying destinations, and providing directional information. The Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation produced a comprehensive, if somewhat technical, set of wayfinding design guidelines.
The guidelines covers basic principles, and very detailed design solutions and strategies, covering topics such as arrival point, main entry, internal arrival point, graphic communication, restrooms and toilets, lifts, and signage design. Sign legibility, system design criteria, and viewing distance to signs are all covered, plus much more. Wayfinding is a key element of accessibility for everyone. Making signs and systems universally designed for everyone requires additional thought and planning.
AS 1428.4.2 Wayfinding Standard, was published in 2018 by Standards Australia.
Thinking cognition and signage
Signalling the right way to go has to account for cognitive abilities, visual acuity, and spatial awareness. As people age some of these abilities decline. Consequently, considering the needs of this group in wayfinding design will make wayfinding easier for everyone.
Mishler and Neider have identified five key points and explain them in detail in their article.
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- Distinctiveness: information should have cues informative to the route which can be distinguished from the surroundings.
- Consistency and standardisation: avoid information overload with the consistent placement, size, colour and shape of signage.
- Simplicity: limiting each sign to three or four units of information, because people tend to glance rather than read, and avoid visual clutter.
- Isolation: keep the signs away from other visual clutter to help focus attention in the right place.
- Reassurance: letting people know they are still on the correct route especially if the destination is a long way from the directional sign.
The title of the article is, “Improving Wayfinding for Older Users with Selective Attention Deficits”, in Ergonomics in Design. For a free read go to the article on ResearchGate.
Editor’s Note: I came across a designer who didn’t want signage to interfere with the design and decided to minimise their impact. This picture shows how one designer thought that disguising signage was a good idea. Architectural wayfinding strategies minimise the need for lots of signs.
Universal design in signage placement
From the abstract
Intuition behind sign placement and wayfinding features rarely encompass the needs of a wide range of building users. To help in automating sign placement, recent research has combined the use of agent-based simulation with optimization algorithms for maximizing visibility and wayfinding throughout a building model.
As with many instances of machine learning applications, these are dominated by an assumed young, healthy, and perfectly sighted virtual human.
We present an analysis of virtual human agents exploring a digital space using a combined vision and modified A* algorithm across multiple postures and visual impairments.
We show how the inclusion of head angle and limited sights can change the results of what may be considered an optimal sign location.
The title of the paper is Universal Design of Signage Through Virtual Human Simulation. You will need institutional access for a free read.
Out and About with Universal Design
Getting out and about is part of staying active and connected within the community, but some people find that more difficult than others. Inner Sydney Voice has an article explaining the 8 Goals of Universal Design and how they can be applied in the urban environment. The examples given are not exhaustive, but do help with thinking about including everyone. The 8 Goals of Universal Design extend the concepts of the classic 7 Principles of Universal Design that are most often quoted in academic articles. You can download the PDF of the article.
The 8 goals are: Body Fit, Comfort, Awareness, Understanding, Wellness, Social Integration, Personalisation, Cultural Appropriateness. They were devised by Steinfeld and Maisel (2012).
Down syndrome and building design
People with Down syndrome sometimes experience space in public and home environments in a different way to others. A study in Belgium of people with Down syndrome and building design revealed some interesting results.
For example, the separation of spaces is not always clear if there is no architectural delineation. Participants showed a preference for brightness, large windows, and illuminated objects and surfaces.
Privacy of space was also important, particularly quiet space for people with Down syndrome. Familiar landmarks and furniture were also important. The discussion section of the paper provides more insights that could help designers consider the intellectual perspectives of users, and not just for people with Down syndrome. The paper also makes links to universal design.
The title of the paper is, “Inclusion of Down Syndrome in Architectural Design: Towards a Methodology“. Authors are Clémintine Schelings and Catherine Elson.
You can download it in PDF (400kb) or in Word (2MB) or open access on the University of Liege website.
From the abstract
This paper develops an in-situ methodology to help architects insure better inclusion of people with Down syndrome all along all phases of the architectural design process. This methodology first offers architects some design keys in regard of how people with Down syndrome interact with two types of spaces: their personal dwellings and some completely unknown spaces.
The methodology then unfolds towards more pro-active inclusion of the participants thanks to playful expression of their feelings and perceptions. This paper discusses how this methodology relates to inclusive and universal design principles as well as prevalent models of disability in architecture.
Editor’s note: More recent research on neurodiversity, autism and dementia have similar findings.
Singapore Universal Design Guide
The Building and Construction Authority in Singapore has updated its Universal Design Guide for Public Places – one of the initiatives under their “Action Plan for Successful Ageing”. The document is structured into chapters, each dealing with a particular aspect of the built environment such as arrival at the building, and wayfinding and information systems.
The guide includes Top 10 features for seniors and Top 10 features for families. The guide is supported by the updated Code on Accessibility in the Built Environment. Family Friendly provisions are included in this.
Singapore has also introduced awards for universal design, and designers and builders can get assessed to have the UD Mark applied to their work.
The inclusion of families in these publications shows how Singapore has moved on from access for people with disability to inclusion for everyone.
Universal design and 40 Principles of TRIZ
A short paper by Kalevi Rantanen shows how to combine the principles of universal design and 40 Principles of TRIZ. It gives another perspective on how to apply the principles of universal design in a problem solving context. TRIZ is the Russian acronym for “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving”.
The title of the paper is, “Homes for Strong Families, Children, Seniors and All Others. How Universal Design, Design for All and Forty Principles of TRIZ Enforce Each Other”.
The 40 Principles of TRIZ are a list of simple, and easy to learn rules for solving technical and non-technical problems quickly and simply. Studying these existing solutions can inspire people to solve new problems and imagine innovative solutions. They show how and where others have successfully eliminated contradictions. They take us to the proven, powerful recorded solutions contained in the patent database. These 40 Inventive Principles help solve both technical and non-technical problems.
Principles and something more
The paper begins with a note about accessibility being a “must”. In TRIZ jargon accessibility is one feature of the Ideal Final Result. It’s about a check between whether a feature reduces harm for one group without increasing harm for another.
“For example, we consider removing a threshold. A harmful feature, a barrier to the user of a wheelchair or walker disappears. Are the useful features retained? Perhaps even new benefits appear? Everything useful is retained if we move thresholds. A new benefit is that it is easier to clean doors.
Will new harmful features appear? Usually not, but some doors may need sealing. In that case flexible, rubber-like thresholds can be used. Does the system become more complex? No, removing thresholds makes a building more simple.”
Norway universally designed by 2025 – Update
The Norwegian Government has taken the principles of universal design and applied them across all policies to create maximum inclusion. This makes everyone responsible for inclusion at every level – in the built environment, outdoor areas, transport, and ICT. Here is an update to “Norway Universally Designed by 2025”.
In 2008, the Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion, launched its first Action Plan 2009-2013. It sets the goal of Norway being universally designed by 2025.
In 2010, Norway amended its Planning and Building Act to include universal 
design. The Delta Centre was given responsibility to coordinate the actions in the 2015-2019 plan in 2016. This plan is more comprehensive and covers ICT and communications to a more detailed level. This is in recognition of how we are becoming more reliant on digital applications.
Olav Rand Bringa provided extra insights at the 2018 UDHEIT conference in Dublin. The title of the paper is, From Visions to Practical Policy: The
Universal Design Journey in Norway. What Did We Learn? What Did We Gain? What Now?