Demographic Trends & Design Principles

Changing Demographics

A number of trends in our society contribute to a growing incompatibility between people and their housing:

• The average household composition in the United States is becoming increasingly varied as our society becomes more diverse.
• The traditional household makeup has expanded to include elderly relatives, adult children, caregivers, and unrelated adults.
• The rapidly-aging American population and longer life expectancies are leading to a greater number of people with physical disabilities.
• Housing prices are high for new buyers, while many empty nesters have more space than they need.

Unfortunately, conventional housing stock generally does not respond to these problems. These trends demand a new approach to designing environments, which would better accommodate people's changing situations and their varying abilities.

“Housing in Response to the Human Life Cycle” is a concept which ZAI coined for designing flexible housing where a home's layout and structure allows for a number of varied floor plans. With movable walls and multi-purpose spaces, the home can easily respond to the changing needs of its residents. It not only takes into account the physiological changes that people experience as they grow older, but also the social and economic changes likely to occur over the course of a lifetime. Today’s multi-cultural and multi-generational households require buildings that are responsive, flexible, and transformable as opposed to those that are fixed, rigid, and unchangeable.

Universal Design is a user-friendly approach to design where people of any culture, age, size, weight, race, gender, and ability can experience an environment that promotes their health, safety and welfare today and in the future. It is a framework for design which benefits the widest possible range of people in the widest range of situations without special adaptations or separate design.

Sustainability, on many levels:

• Economic Sustainability: When designed appropriately, a home’s layout can be easily modified when the need arises, thus reducing expensive remodeling and increasing marketability. It also allows homeowners to offset costs by renting out part of the home when it is not needed. These options enable homeowners to remain in one place even though their needs change, thus preventing the need to sell their home in poor real estate markets.
• Social Sustainability: By designing flexibility into a home, it remains appropriate for multiple life transitions. This promotes ‘aging-in-place’, and encourages people to become more vested in their neighborhood, and contributes to more stable and sustainable communities. Flexibility of housing accommodates a variety of cultural values, family structures and social fabric.
• Environmental Sustainability: When a house is designed with future changes in mind, then potential remodeling waste is drastically reduced, and the longevity of a material’s use is increased. This forward thinking approach is, of course, combined with common sense principles of site orientation, energy efficiency, ‘green’ materials, and healthy indoor air quality.

Copyright 2010-2011

ZAI Designs ADU for the Seattle Home Show