practical living
hazard, so if people are getting lost down hallways or forgetting
to do daily activities, then we, with the Desert Rose, try to help
them to still perform those daily activities as much as possible so
they can be a bit more self-sufficient. So we try to remove all of
those things that might be a hazard in the future.
We have a strong point in all of the walls, throughout the entire
house, for hand rails. So if their journey has ability issues, we can
install hand rails throughout the home. So rather than have to
heavily retrofit the home in the future, or have them move into a
nursing home or something with high care, they can hopefully
stay in the home for that little bit longer.
Obviously, for most people, there will be a stage in their
journey where higher care will be needed. We do have a second
room which could be used for a carer, in certain instances. But
eventually, if the dementia progresses too far, they will still need
to go for those high-care facilities.
We have, however, made the doorway into the master
bedroom wide enough that you can fit a whole hospital bed in
there, too, so if people are looking to have palliative care in their
own home, it is achievable in the Desert Rose.
What design principles did you have in mind when developing
this house?
We’ve worked a bit with Richard Fleming from Dementia Training
Australia. He’s a professor at the University of Wollongong and
has 10 design principles that he uses with his designing for large
scale things, as opposed to individual residential homes.
We’ve gone through and used quite a few of his principles. A lot
of them are just good design, like reducing risks where they’re not
needed, or reducing sound. And some of his design principles
have more of a home in those large-scale things, whereas we
don’t really have those issues in an individual dwelling.
Also, we did a ‘day in the life’ activity, where we went through
and pictured what we do throughout a day. Then we looked at
some of the issues that people may have if they’re living with
dementia, and how we could remove some of those issues so
that they could still go about those daily activities.
What feedback have you had from aged care providers?
We’ve had some really good, positive feedback so far. I’ve gone
to nursing homes across the Greater Illawarra for my research.
My PhD is involved with going into 200 low-income elderly
people’s homes across the Greater Illawarra, and that includes
independent living. So we were able to learn a lot from not just
how design was currently done with aged care providers, but
from the occupants as well.
Actually, with my research I had no intention of capturing
stories from people, but it’s something that we’ve benefited from
greatly, while going and visiting all these people’s homes every
couple of years. So we tried to build a lot of the stuff that we
learned from those people into fixing things in the Desert Rose.
But we haven’t had a chance, I guess, to tour a lot of aged care
providers now, since we built the house, but we’re excited to get
them in and see what their opinions are. But more importantly,
get the people in who would potentially be living in these homes
in the future, and get their opinion as well.
What features in the house would support occupants with
mobility issues?
There are lots of standards out there concerning wheelchairs, but
not many for walkers. Some of the people I visited in my research
weren’t in a wheelchair – they used a walker. And one instance
where that doesn’t work is their hallways, which were designed
to make it easy for wheelchairs to navigate. However, they were
in a walker and were unable to take the walker down the hallway
or move it around.
One of the things we used during the design was the
Microsoft HoloLens. It’s an augmented reality headset that
allows you to walk through the house at a 1:1 scale, but it was in
a virtual environment. So we have a walker with us in our design
studio and we would take it out, put the goggles on, and we
were able to walk through the house and see how the walker
coped with all the furniture and turning cycles in the house.
If it didn’t work, we’d have to go back to our models, change
them on the computer and, five minutes later, load it back i