Designing tailored spaces for Alzheimer’s patients, an architectural perspective

Abstract

When Alzheimers afflicts a person it also has a major impact on the home. This inevitably means that significant changes must be made. As architects, we have pondered how we can better design living spaces for those affected by various degrees of memory impairment. How to design for the absence of memory? The approach to this challenge, from an architectural standpoint, needs a new perspective that requires focusing on the specific necessities of an inhabitant, as opposed to the effects of the disease itself. We are looking more at the specific implications on the living environments and how they could be designed or modified to adapt to the subjects constantly changing conditions. The purpose of this article is to show how architecture, from its duality as an art/technical discipline, is tackling this problem developing research methodology which involves looking at the concrete needs of the users in their daily domestic space, analyzing its security, accessibility and the customization of space as a sensory stimulus and emotional stabilizer. Additionally, we seek to generate a body of knowledge in order to develop composition elements and mechanisms to design, build and humanize the environment to fulfill their necessities, adapting it to the evolution of the disease and improving quality of life.