BEFORE THE ARCHITECT – HOME DESIGNING BACKGROUND – UNIQUE HOME DESIGNING ARTICLES
SO YOU'RE THINKING ABOUT AN ACCESSIBLE HOME DESIGN STYLE FOR YOUR GOLDEN YEARS?
By Before The Architect Copyright 2003-2007 Before The Architect
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Introduction
This custom home designer prefers the term “accessible" home design.
Still, there’s a forest of nomenclature through which to wend your way,
including but likely not limited to – Universal
home design; ADA standards for
accessible home design; Life-cycle housing; Flex housing
home design; Lifespan
home design; Barrier-free
home design; Smart housing
home design; Renewable home
design; Secret accessibility
home design; Aging in place
home design;
The forever home
design; Universal design
lite home design.
Whew.
The essence – Design a
home with
its residents’ physical aging in mind, because if they’re not old
already, chances are swell that they will be.
Less colorfully – Modify the conventional habitable structure in recognition of occupants’ diminishing physical function – potential or actual
Comment: This home designer prefers the descriptive “mature" over “old". We’re
talking a state of grace, a status and role, an achievement, a sector in the
circle of life, and not a social, generational, or pejorative pigeonhole.
Accessible home design is about three groups: Those who prepare
for a time when they'll be living in the same place long enough to
reasonably expect some significant physical diminution; those who already
experience that for which the former group is preparing; those who take into
their household someone in either of the former two groups.
Before
The Architect home-designs for each of these groups. It’s not tough; it’s
thoughtful, mindful, reconsiderate. Good home design done well can readily
include good accessible home design at some client-acceptable level, usually
a subject of welcomed interest and attention.
Of very special note to custom home designers specifically in regard
to accessible home design – Listen closely to
clients’ interests and intentions. Disclosing and
discussing physical challenges comes easy to a few and
difficult-to-all-but-impossible for more than a few
Approaching opacity, they’ll only be hints – A function-specific product suggestion; a grateful reply to something you’d do anyway, say, the 5’ diameter open area in a bath; questioning door width more than once; absolutely rejecting steps between home and finish grade; pointed concern about cabinet or countertop height.
Wipe out conclusory anticipations, clichés, really – Not all mature folks walk poorly. There are plenty of other burdens that befall the human condition – its senses, its capacities, its propensities.
You’ll never get it home-designed all right – People change; products proliferate; all eventualities cannot be accounted; however, you will get it home-designed better if you pay attention to what you're doing. Home designing for adaptability trumps remediating for adaptability, stomps it flat. The former conserves money, time, physical disruption, functionality, expectations, stress, sanity. The latter tears it up.
Attention to home designing for mature residents is organic: the more mature, the more attention.
In my opinion, organic doesn’t mean standardized, straightforward and systematic; it means messy, nonlinear, systemically differentiated as in one size does not fit all.
While circumstances in accessible home design improve as between thought and practice, disconnects abound. Such discontinuities are not limited to home designing, let alone for the mature. This home designer reckons it in other realms of home design, including but not limited to electrical wiring, home light whether for aging eyes or not, home fire safety, foundation insulation, framing and closing in, kitchen design, aspects of bathroom design, ventilation, sterility of home designing style, and so forth.
Some notions of accessible home design pervade home designing – the stuff you see and hear about day-to-day – for example, levered door handles, ramps, passage widths (sort of), roll-in showers (so California), and showerbath seats. Other notions are developing, but still murky in this home designer’s opinion, for example, facets of kitchen design and other home design more widely focused on us shuffling stiffly into the Fall and Winter of our years. Still other home designing tasks and techniques are not often if ever addressed
Floors. Doorways passage shall be flush to ½ linear inch saddle, or threshold, including water dams at the foot of garage floors, where the vehicle door seats - means covered porches are happily here to stay. Finish flooring shall be preferably hard – wood, masonry tile, etc – and not soft – most carpet. Unobstructed pathways shall be continuous throughout a space (and, of course, between spaces) and shall be not less than 32 linear inches wide, not just clearspans at passage doorways. Coefficients of friction shall be in the 0.5 range, and not less, and, selectively, shall be in the 0.6 range especially on the exterior, as a covered porch deck. Floor level transitions shall not abruptly vary more than ½ linear inch, as by a rug or flooring transition, not just at thresholds
Cabinetry. Natural reach and not stretched reach shall be emphasized (see Architectural Graphics Standards, 10th Edition , Ramsey/Sleeper in this vein). Lower storage shall be preferred to higher storage. Countertops may be deepened as an assist in storage space resolution. Drawer storage shall be preferred to door-controlled shelf storage. Shelves shall be preferably open. Shelves shall be preferably sliding. Kitchen storage home design metrics shall be adjusted accordingly. A pantry directly accessible from the kitchen shall be included in storage metrics at the rate of 1.5 times capacity from counter level down and 1 times above, adjusted for depth.
Countertops. Heights shall be varied to include 30 linear inches above finish floor level, and sited in at least part of major work areas in kitchen and master bath. Bath countertop may be, in part, raised above the conventional 30 linear inches above finish floor level. Home design shall include sit-down, open-below counter in work area of both kitchen (preparation sector) and master bath and, preferably, laundry. Both kitchen eat-in and adult bars may be at conventional sit-down heights (so California). Community and private spaces shall be on the same floor level, while noting that home elevators are increasingly affordable and minorly space hogish.
Comment: Accessible bathroom home design and home building is presented at length in the author’s Home Design Standards-Home Building Standards.
Stairs. Treads shall be lighted (low-voltage, as below nosing, along stringer casing, at sidewall) or treads otherwise distinguished one from another by color or both. Risers shall be 6 ½ linear inches approximately, equally ±¼ linear inch – emphatically on the exterior. Treads shall be 11 linear inches approximately, equally ± ¼ linear inch – emphatically on the exterior. One riser and one tread shall sum to 17 ½ linear inches approximately, whether exterior or interior. Stairs wider than 3 linear feet shall have continuous handrails on both sides, whether interiors or exteriors, including winders. Landings shall be as wide and at least as deep as tread width.
Electricity. Utility receptacles shall be 15-18 linear inches on-center above finish floor level. Light switch controls shall be 36-40 linear inches on-center above finish floor level. Light switch controls shall be sited within 12 linear inches of a passage and physically unobstructed. Home light shall be layered; non-glare; gradually transitioned; not less than 40 foot candles anywhere; not less than 70 foot candles in kitchen, bath, and laundry interiors and at exterior of passages to interior; not less than 100 foot candles at kitchen, bath, and laundry countertops. Motion sensors shall be your friends, particularly in complex intersections of traffic. Pressure switch controls shall be your friends, particularly in wall light switch controls at access-limited spaces, as in smaller closets - so long as the occupants habitually close closet doors. Light switch controls shall be dimmers wherever possible, noting Lutron owns multiple-way light switch control dimming in this custom home designer’s opinion [and noting also that the home designer does not fully appreciate rocker light switch controls with the itsy-bitsy rheostatic slide control].
Walls shall be selectively fortified for grab bars whether or not immediately installed
Appliances. Units, notably laundry units, shall be front-loading wherever possible. Units may be set upon pedestals or lowered when wall-hung to increase access by natural reach. Units shall be preferably accessible by drawer below countertop. Units shall be preferably accessible by side-opening door above countertop.
Comment: This home designer notes that at the upper end of kitchen home appliances, there are accessible-sensitive features and increasingly, including but not limited to cushioned closing of heavy oven doors that'd otherwise could take more than you've got to keep it from banging closed, automatic sealing of refrigerator/freezer doors without having to make that for-sure push that you might not always make, sealed rangetop burners for hugely easier cleanup, etc.
Colors shall be light. Varied.
Surfaces shall be finished in other than glossy. All surfaces.
Sure, sure. There’s more to this than has met your eyes so far
Nevertheless, there’s enough here to make the point that home-designing an accessible home is devoutly to be wished at the get-go and not in retrofit. Is a considered collection of materials and methods including: the obvious – stuff everybody in the know knows; the not so obvious – stuff you get from media; and the individuated – stuff that’s really about you.
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