Stijn Baumers

Home in later life: A framework for the architecture of home environments

ABSTRACT With the growing number of people moving into old age, architects face the challenge of designing appropriate residential environments for current and future generations of older people. Too often they live in houses that are not adapted to their needs and desires, with few spatial and social qualities of a real home. Among architects and professional care givers awareness is growing of the importance of “feeling at home” in residential care environments, rather than just having basic needs like food, shelter, and medical care met. This article builds on this tendency. Based on literature from different disciplines, we first identify a set of concepts that form a framework to understand: (1) what is important in order to create a feeling of homeliness, particularly for older people, and (2) how the physical house and its environment can contribute to that. We then articulate how these concepts can be reflected in the architecture of the home by drawing on empirical material from case studies in the homes of older people living in different contexts. The feeling of homeliness is based on a dynamic balance between autonomy and security. This balance is an ongoing process, called appropriation; it is the process by which a person makes a house into a home. For five spatial aspects we describe and document how they may contribute to enhancing the autonomy/security balance.

Harnessing Different Dimensions of Space: The Built Environment in Auti-biographies

An understanding of diversity is a key principle in the development of theories, tools and techniques of design for inclusion. In assembling new perspectives for inclusive design, we want to gain a more accurate insight into the diversity of people’s interaction with the designed environment. People with autism spectrum disorders, for example, due to their particular way of thinking, make sense of their surrounding world in a unique way. Starting from this notion, our research questions the relevance to them of the meaning attributed to the built environment in our society, by studying the interaction between the world of experience of people with autism and the design of the built environment. In this paper, we investigate the way people with autism talk about space and the importance they attach to their physical environment, as reflected in stories and autobiographies of people with autism themselves—in short, auti-biographies. By analysing their own descriptions, we try to gain more insight into an autistic way of thinking and acting in relation to the built environment.

How do People with Autism (Like to) Live

Research on inclusive design focuses on designing environments that account for the diversity in human abilities and conditions. People with autism, for instance, deal with their environment in a particular way because their different way of processing information influences their spatial experience. Literature offers a growing number of concepts to create autism-friendly living environments. These concepts start from putting people with autism centre stage, yet in their formulation the autistic person him/herself often risks to disappear from view. This raises the question what meaning and value these concepts have, and how designers can use them. The study reported here aims to reconsider these concepts by refocusing on autistic people themselves. Interviews were conducted with 11 adults with autism who are living more or less independently and were willing to share their stories about how they (like to) live. On the one hand, analysis of these interviews shows that concepts of autism-friendly architecture are not indisputable rules that can be applied straightforwardly, and that one concept may reinforce but also counteract another. In each particular situation thus a balance must be sought, which will likely be easier when designing an environment for a single known inhabitant than when designing for multiple known or potentially unknown inhabitants. On the other hand, visits to autistic peoples houses often gave a sobering impression: very common houses where only details suggest that someone with autism is living there. Often, however, reality often does not reflect the ideal situation they described. The latter starts not so much from how it should be, but from how they would like it most, which does not necessarily fit the traditional view of a good place to live. As a result, this study contributes not only to a more nuanced understanding of concepts of autism-friendly architecture found in literature, but also to a more colourful image of what an autism-friendly living environment could be.

Capturing Experience: An Autistic Approach to Designing Space

Abstract In conceiving the built environment, designers are inherently involved in shaping spaces people will live in. On the assumption that their interventions in space affect people’s experience, many designers take up the responsibility to take people’s experience into account. However, given the diversity of people who interact with space, it is still a challenge for designers to anticipate the diverse experiences of future users. Building on designers’ challenge in anticipating experience, this paper discusses the particular design process of a man, diagnosed with autism, who aspires to capture experience in designing his own living environment. Although his structured sequence of well-reasoned design decisions could be read in the light of an autistic way of thinking, the story of the man himself offers a more nuanced picture of his design approach, which raises fundamental questions about issues that seem to be taken for granted in our own context of designing.