Author:

Keywords:

architectural design, dementia, orientation, experience, ethnography

Abstract:

Due to memory loss, most people with dementia are increasingly disorientated in space, time, and identity, which causes profound feelings of insecurity, anxiety and homelessness. The built environment is expected to hold great potential for offering support in coping with the challenges resulting from disorientation. However, scientific research offers little adequate architectural design knowledge. This paper indicates three reasons for this lack of adequate architectural design knowledge: prevailing research takes an objectivist approach to value-bound matters, lacks insights into living with dementia, and hardly addresses architects’ core business of form and spatial organization. Next, this article presents and discusses a novel research approach that aims to overcome these limitations, illustrated with a study on how architecture could support people with dementia in orientating in space, time, and identity. This study explored three cases from a critical realist and constructionist perspective and by means of ethnographic techniques combined with an architectural analysis. Five implications for architectural design are highlighted: create strategic places, articulate proper boundaries and connections, include everyday places and objects, create contemporary architectural qualities, and take into account social dynamics. The approach taken allowed to give voice to people with dementia and provide insights into their experiences in a format that helps architects to develop affinity with their perspective. Care givers are introduced to the repertoire (or at least a part of it) that architects possess to design architecture for people with dementia. Linking insights into living with dementia with architects’ core business, i.e. organization of form and space, enhances dialogues between architects and their clients, and broadens their view on possible roles of architecture in the daily lives of people with dementia.