The Gregory Grandparents

The application of Universal Design has been something that I have been focusing all year through the development of separate living quarters that include a bathroom, kitchen, and child’s room. This project shows my knowledge of universal design in one small apartment for two elderly people.

One of the things that I would have done differently with my design was flip the residence so the entry to both interior homes where closer to the main entry to the whole home. This way the people would need to walk far to get to the home.

Another thing that flipping the residence would have fixed was that it would add a window to the bedroom. While it could have been easier to just add a window for this project the client did not want to add or remove any windows.

All together this project turned great, applying all the requirements for universal design in a small tight space built for two simple people.

Bathroom Design

The bathroom to me seems like the one place loaded with ADA requirements. No matter where one person looks there is a place that requires specific requirements. The toilet, shower, sink, pretty much every inch had to be attended to in order to fit the requirements.

For this bathroom I tried for a nature feel in order to tone down some of the over whelming ugly grab bars, ect.

Wheelchair Experience

All semester learning about Universal Design and designing for a person in a wheel chair has been through books, articles and small lectures from my instructor. The only real way to learn about the size requirements and how to design for a person in a wheel chair can only happen after I had been in their shoes. So I took a wheel chair and explored on a building just to see what it was like getting around in a wheel chair.

One of the biggest problems that I noticed was in the bathrooms. While there was enough space to get into place, it was not an easy task to get there. I had to move back and forth a few times to move into place. Since I was have this much trouble in the bathroom it made me realize that when I design my bathroom I needed to apply more room then the minimum so the person can move straight to where they need to go without getting into tight places.

The other thing I noticed was the counter top to order food, at the small food stand was at about 5 ft. Way to tall for a person in a wheel chair. While the counter to receive the food was at a height that was accessible the ordering counter was way to tall to order food, making it not fit the universal design requirements.