Houses designed with possible disabilities in mind may also save money.
Lifetime Design
This is not the sort of thing one wants to hear late at night; if you are female and live until you are 90, there’s a 50% chance you will have dementia. At least, this was according to a nurse being interviewed on the BBC, who was offering advice on how to build a dementia-friendly house. She sounded as fit as a fiddle, but bearing in mind the aforementioned statistic, was planning for the future. Each time she did a home renovation she ensured it would cater for the day that her mind might not be what it once was. Her kitchen, for instance, had cupboards with removable doors so that should her short-term memory fail, she could still find the coffee cups.
Dementia is not something we care to think about too much unless we have to, and the prospect of it is not generally something that informs our decisions about the homes we buy or build. But why wouldn’t it?
If we don’t end up suffering from it there’s a reasonable chance that we’ll end up caring for someone who does. Even if we are lucky enough to avoid both situations the basics of a dementia-friendly home are perfectly good design principles to live by and with: seamless floors, plenty of space, rooms with views (preferably of a garden) and enough sunlight to keep our circadian rhythms in check so we don’t go wandering the streets at midnight.
If we look at our home as the castle in which we’d like to grow old and die, rather than be forced to leave because there’s not enough space for the walker, then we might want to plan for future frailties of one sort or another. This is the premise of Lifemark, an organisation set up to provide an independent seal of approval for residential housing that is usable, adaptable, accessible, inclusive and that, if it meets the four principles, will last a lifetime.
Its mantra is housing for “all ages and stages”. Think of it as the design equivalent of the Heart Foundation’s tick, promoting longevity through good architecture rather than healthy food. The organisation is mainly targeting rest homes – the Summerset Retirement Villages was the first retirement village operator to sign up – as well as designers, architects and builders.
Lifemark principles, according to the company, make sound commercial sense, as they will give a home a point of difference and can only enhance its resale value. If you believe the statistics they’re also common sense: 45% of people over 65 have one disability or another, and by 2051, there will be over 1.14 million people in that age bracket living in New Zealand. Our ageing housing stock – all those houses with narrow hallways and tiny doors and steps up to the verandah – will no longer suit our ageing population. (As some architects have noted, our heritage rules might protect old houses from property developers, but not old people from hip fractures.)
Wellington architect Ron Pynenberg has been promoting accessible residential design since the 1970s, when he became involved with the Barriers Free Trust. A keen supporter of the Lifemark programme, he would even advocate its principles be incorporated into the building code, arguing that people are often forced out of their own homes, not because they can no longer fend for themselves, but because the houses in which they live don’t allow them to continue to do so.
He agrees there are design challenges – we can’t predict what, if any disability, will get us – but it’s about building so a house can be adapted easily and inexpensively for the occasion.
“Think about the baby boomers who might be buying or building the house that they expect they are going to stay in for the rest of their lives,” he says. “If these principles aren’t included, it all might come unstuck in 20 years’ time. It might cost them an awful lot of money to make their home liveable, or they might find they have to move somewhere else.”
If we do the maths on the thousands of houses being built each year, is it another leaky building crisis in the making? “It’s just going to mean that future generations will have to spend unnecessary money fixing up the mistakes we’re making now.”
Pynenberg keeps himself fit and expects to be skiing in his 70s. “But if it doesn’t work out, I want to make sure that I can stay in my home surrounded by the things I know and am interested in, rather than in a box with a sideboard and a couple of photos.”