BEFORE THE ARCHITECT – BACKGROUND – AMAZING HOME DESIGN ARTICLES
· · · · · · ·
AMAZING HOME DESIGN ARTICLE:
So, You Want An Adaptable Design House for Your Golden Years?
By
Before The Architect
Copyright 2007 Before The Architect
YOU MAY FREELY QUOTE THE AG'S AMAZING HOME DESIGN ARTICLES WITH PROPER ATTRIBUTION
Amazing Home Design Plan Article Introduction
This amazing home plan designer designer prefers the term “adaptable" house design
golden years' designer house plans.
Still, there’s a forest of nomenclature through which to wend your way,
including but likely not limited to –
|
Universal design | |
|
ADA standards for accessible design | |
|
Life-cycle housing | |
|
Flex housing | |
|
Lifespan design | |
|
Barrier-free design | |
|
Smart housing | |
|
Renewable home | |
|
Secret accessibility | |
|
Aging in place | |
|
The forever house | |
|
Universal design lite |
Whew.
The essence –
|
Client requests for amazing home design house plans with golden years residents’ physical aging in mind increase steadily, because if they’re not old already, chances are swell that they will be. |
Less colorfully –
|
Modify the conventional habitable structure of designer house plans in recognition of occupants’ diminishing physical function – potential or actual. |
Comment: This house designer prefers the descriptive “mature" over “old"
for golden years' guys and gals. 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.
Adaptable design house plans are about three golden years 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 designs for each of these golden years groups. It’s not tough; it’s
thoughtful, mindful, reconsiderate. Good design done well can readily
include good adaptable design.
Of very special note to custom house designers specifically in regard
to adaptable house 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 –
| |||||||||||
|
Wipe out conclusory anticipations, clichés, really –
| |||||||||||
|
You’ll never get it designed all right –
| |||||||||||
|
Designing for adaptability trumps remediating for adaptability, stomps it flat
|
Attention to designer house plans 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 adaptable house design improve as between thought and practice, disconnects abound.
| |||||||||||||||||||
|
Some notions of adaptable house design pervade house 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 house designer’s opinion, for example, facets of kitchen design and design more widely focused on us only shuffling stiffly into the Fall and Winter of our years | |||||||||||||||||||
|
Still other house designing tasks and techniques are not often if ever addressed | |||||||||||||||||||
|
Floors
| |||||||||||||||||||
|
Cabinetry
| |||||||||||||||||||
|
Countertops
| |||||||||||||||||||
|
Community and private spaces shall be on the same floor level, while noting that residential elevators are increasingly affordable and minorly space hogish |
Comment: Adaptable bathroom design and bathroom construction is presented at length in the author’s Home Design Standards - Home Building Standards
|
Stairs
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Electricity
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Walls shall be selectively fortified for grab bars whether or not immediately installed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Appliances
|
Comment: This house designer notes that at the upper end of kitchen appliances, there are adaptable-sensitive design 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. And light. | |
|
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 designing an adaptable house is
|
BYLINE: Before The Architect’s principals Ralph & Jean Pressel consult on,
design, and
Autocad-draft custom home building plans nationwide, based on
their
combined 75+ years of design and custom home building experiences. Their content-rich
website is
http://www.beforethearchitect.com.
Their principal e-book is Home Design Standards - Home Building Standards, up-dated from time to time.
LENGTH:
1555 WORDS approximately.
If this is your first visit to Before The Architect, please consider spending a few moments looking over the Site Map, in order to get a feel for the architecture of the site itself.