General Interest Articles

In this article, against the background of his personal experiences and the twin concepts of "universal design" and "adaptive design," the author describes CACAD's universal living project that brought adaptive design to the South Mall Towers in Albany, New York.

Franklin C. Shephard is CEO of Woods Hole Data Base, Inc., a science and database publishing firm located in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. He also writes on disability and health-related topics, and is a member of CACAD.

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Index

Page 1

• Introduction
• Universal Design

Page 2

• Adaptive Design at South Mall Towers
• Design features
• Kitchens and bathrooms
• Lighting
• Communication and control

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Introduction

Halfway up a 1000-foot cliff on a climbing route called "Thin Air," Franklin Shephard, a fit 49-year-old man, belayed his teenage son up to a tiny perch. It was a brilliant blue-sky September day. They tied themselves in. Legs dangling in space, they ate lunch, and reveled in their eagle's perch, the fall colors of the tree canopy far below, each other's company; and, in matter of fact, about just how great life really is.

The next weekend this same man stumbled on a stony trail while carrying a canoe. His twisting fall ruptured a lumbar spinal disk. The injury cut off the blood supply to a section of his spinal cord, killing many of the millions of nerves that connect the brain to the body. He ended up a partial paraplegic.

For six months he was confined to a wheelchair. Now he gets around fairly well with a pair of forearm crutches. One day Shephard was "able-bodied." The next day he had joined the ranks of the so-called disabled. Same man, but in an innocent and unexpected moment his life had changed forever.

Depending on who is counting, and what is counted, the number of disabled Americans is reckoned to be in the range of 20 to 100 million people. In many ways, Shephard's disability makes him typical, not atypical, and certainly not tragic. He still thinks life is plenty great, and may appreciate it even more.

Most people who don't die instantly of a heart attack, stroke, or accident will eventually experience disability. During that time they will want the same thing they wanted before: as much as possible to be integrated, independent, functioning human beings. Some of the capacity for that is innate to them, or a matter of luck. A lot of it, though, has to do with assistive technology and well-considered ergonomic design.

Aside from the disabled (however they are defined and counted) there are those whose mobility, motor skills, height, weight, hearing, or vision are deficient enough to be "impairing." Both childhood and old age carry some degree of impediment to normal activities around a house. So do temporary impairments associated with illness, injury, or recovery from surgery.

Shephard had not been very aware of any of this. He had designed and built his own home ten years previously. It is situated on a steep hillside and has a strongly vertical character-- something that appealed to Shephard's love of heights and unobstructed views. When he returned home after rehabilitation, still wheelchair-bound, his own unconscious assumptions were there to mock him. It took months for him and his wife to figure out just how they might continue to live in the cherished home that they had designed "for life."

It is only recently that he came to realize that with only minor forethought and expense most of what he enjoyed about his home and its site could have been preserved--while saving him the grief of the dozens of obstacles that he faced on returning home. One example: none of the three bathrooms in Shephard's house had a doorway wide enough to permit the passage of a wheelchair.

UNIVERSAL DESIGN

About the very time Shephard was designing his own "inaccessible" house, some in the building industry were absorbed with the question of designing for those with "special needs." Their interest followed from passage of the 1968 Architectural Barriers Act, the provisions of which were expanded under the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.

Prior to such legislation the standard practice of builders and manufacturers was to design for the "average" person, of which there isn't even one. But spurred by changing law, the new assumption was that, in addition to average people, there were unique exceptions whose needs were special. For the latter, design decisions would be highly customized to meet the "special needs" of each impaired individual, or (more realistically) each impaired "class" of individuals.

The experts and institutes concerned with special needs came to see the weakness of this approach. Too individualized and non-standard, it carried little incentive for manufacturers and was very costly. The question was whether standardization could be founded on some principle other than that of "the average." Out of this thinking grew the twin concepts of "universal design" and "adaptive design."

The main premise of these concepts is that every single person's abilities change from infancy to old age. Therefore, design should not be based on averages, but on the employment of building features and elements easy to use by people of all ages, sizes, and abilities. Such design elements are described as "inclusive."

Shephard's bathroom doorways are a case in point. The narrow doors literally filtered out those in wheelchairs. Wider doorways would have "included" wheelchair users at little additional expense. Likewise, if those doors were equipped with lever handles instead of "knobs", they could more easily be used by those with arthritis or other conditions that impair the use of one's hands.

When hardware, fixtures, or appliances can not be used easily by all people, designers concerned with accessibility and inclusion consider how these elements may be installed on adjustable racks or tracks so that their height or position can be changed. For example, a clothes pole can be hung from brackets that permit adjustment of height; or a bathroom mirror can be mounted so that it can be tilted. Such adjustability is sometimes referred to as "adaptive design."

The universal or adaptive design approach is superior to the special needs approach because it uses and encourages the manufacture of standard products that can be mass produced. And, it encourages the more thoughtful use of standard and simple building techniques. Through these devices, costs can be minimized. With the standardization of flexible and inclusive designs, there is more incentive for industry to respond, and fewer problems with compliance or liability issues.

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