A recent Sunday New York Times op-ed story had a familiar sound to those of us who have cared for aging relatives. The writer, a doctor, was taking her father to a medical appointment. She was juggling his walker, her car, and, most scary of all, the worry that her dad would slip, fall, or wander off in the moments that she left him in the medical center lobby while she went to park the car.
America is growing old. You know the numbers: In the next 40 years, there will be some 80 million of us over 65 and 19 million who will be over 85. What’s more, it’s a cohort that is reinventing what it means to grow old.
I’m not writing this to bum you out–the opposite, actually. I’m suggesting that all of us start to see aging in place as an opportunity for function, beauty, and design that lives on to serve the aged–and everybody else. Universal design is called so for a reason and we need to do better so that it can live up to its name. We need to make it as green as salvage timber, triple paned windows, and PV arrays. The Harvard Center for Joint Housing Studies says that 77% percent of us don’t want to leave home when we age–we want to stay there. That’s great news for architects, builders, and remodelers. So, let’s find elegant ways to work elevators and stair lifts into the floor plan. Let’s insist that shower grab bars be beautiful, and let’s design ramps that are integrated and dignified. Read more…