Designing For Changing Resident Needs
Designing for change means building in the structure, clearances and services a future adaptation will need, so the adaptation is an installation rather than a renovation.
How do you design a dwelling for needs that will change over time?
By building in the capacity before it is needed. Structural backing for grab rails and hoists, clearances that suit a larger wheelchair, spare electrical capacity, and doorways sized generously. Each costs very little at fabrication and turns a future adaptation into an installation rather than a renovation.
A dwelling is designed around the person who will live in it.
Then their needs change, or they move on and somebody else moves in, and the dwelling has to work for a person nobody had met when it was built.
Designing for that is inexpensive at fabrication and costly afterwards.
What actually changes
**Mobility declines or improves.** Someone walking with a frame today may use a wheelchair in five years. Someone recovering from an injury may need less support over time.
**Equipment arrives.** A ceiling hoist, a specialist bed, a shower chair, a communication system. Each has its own requirements and most were not specified at design.
**Support arrangements change.** A resident living independently may later need overnight support, which changes the requirement for a second bedroom, a bathroom, or a separate entry.
**The resident changes.** In Specialist Disability Accommodation the dwelling outlasts the tenancy. A building enrolled for one person will house several over its life.
What gets built in
The principle is simple: put in the things that are difficult to add later, and leave out the things that are easy.
**Structural backing everywhere it might be needed.** Noggings behind the lining in bathrooms, beside toilets, along circulation walls and at bedheads. A grab rail can then be fitted anywhere on that wall, at any height, by anyone, in an hour. Without it, the same rail means opening the lining.
**Ceiling structure for a hoist,** whether or not a hoist is being installed. The track can come later. The structure above the ceiling cannot, because the ceiling is closed in the factory.
**Generous clearances rather than minimum ones.** A wheelchair circulation space sized for a compact chair works until the resident gets a larger powered chair. The difference at design stage is a few hundred millimetres of floor area. Afterwards it is a wall.
**Doorways wider than the minimum,** for the same reason.
**Spare electrical capacity and conduit.** Spare circuits at the board, and conduit to the places equipment tends to arrive: the bedhead, the bathroom, the entry. Pulling a cable through an existing conduit is trivial. Chasing a new one is not.
**Blocking for future joinery,** so a bench can be lowered, a rail added, or a cupboard removed without structural work.
What is deliberately left out
Not everything should be installed in advance.
A hoist that nobody uses is equipment to maintain and a ceiling track in a room that did not need one. Grab rails installed at every possible location make a dwelling look institutional, and that matters to the person living in it.
The distinction is between **capacity** and **fitting**. Build the capacity in. Fit what the current resident needs. Leave the rest available.
That is also the difference between a dwelling that feels like a home and one that feels like a facility, which is not a small consideration for somebody who lives there.
Why the factory helps
Every one of those provisions is installed while the wall is open on a line, by a team following a specification, with the work inspected before the lining goes on.
Which is a very different proposition from a site-built dwelling where the backing goes in if the carpenter remembers and nobody can confirm it afterwards. It is the same [quality control](/blog/factory-quality-control-and-tolerances) argument that applies to everything else in the module.
MADE builds every dwelling to the Specialist Disability Accommodation [standard](/standards), which means these provisions are the default rather than an upgrade requested by a knowledgeable client.
The whole-of-life argument
A provider running a dwelling for thirty years will adapt it several times.
Each adaptation on a building without built-in capacity means opening walls, repairing linings, repainting, and taking the dwelling out of service for weeks. Each adaptation on a building with capacity is a tradesperson for a day.
Over the life of the asset that difference is substantial, and it is the argument made in [whole-of-life costs](/blog/maintenance-and-whole-of-life-costs).
MADEmodular / MADEbetter.
MADEmodular / MADEbetter.