Sergio Antonio Carlos

Planning the Built Environment, Institutions and Aging in Latin America

This chapter addresses the need to plan and implement support networks for a growing elderly population, focusing on Long Term Institutions for the Elderly (ILPIs). Among the many opportunities of projects in a ILPI, we chose to approach the planning of open spaces as a resource to improve the quality of life of institutionalized elderly. We conducted an action research with the main objective of studying the application of the concept of social design into planning of open spaces in a ILPI. In order to do that, the elderly residents participated in the design of a garden. First, we conducted observations and interviews to understand the relationship between residents and the open spaces of the institution, as well as their relationships with gardens when they were younger and their preferences about them. Next, several meetings were hold with the purpose of raising awareness among the participants about the potential of the open spaces of the institution, broadening their knowledge on gardens and possibilities of design adapted to elderly users, and involving them in the choice of the area to build the garden, as well as in the definition of requirements and design solutions for the garden. Finally, we conducted interviews to assess the residents’ perceptions and feelings regarding their participation in the process. The analysis of the interviews revealed perceptions and feelings associated with enhancing the respondents’ personal skills to deal with the institutional environment. Our findings suggest that the use of participatory planning methods, such as social design, may promote the well-known beneficial effects of open spaces on the personal dimension of the relationship between the elderly and the institutional settings, thus providing for an improved theoretical link between the references of environmental gerontology and studies on the people-nature relations.