Independent Living for Livespan: a Healthy and Sustainable Architecture

Background Older growing persons face the consequences of their life, including diseases and impairments, which threaten the quality of life. Health definitions and sustainability have the environmental aspect and the quality of life in common. The focus in the sustainability theory is on a balance between the benefits for persons, profit and planet. The Green Model (P.Lawton) underlines the trigger of older growing persons to their ultimate competence. With growing age vitality of persons shows an increasing spread, which pronounces the need for a dwelling design, adaptable to individual ambitions of older growing persons. Independence Threats Housing policy towards the year 2030- perspective enhances the independent living for lifetime dwelling type. The leave of the own independent living for a move home to a Nursing hospital gives an indication of availability of a good living environment. Four main motives for leaving the own home were found: bad health condition, available good housing conditions, loneliness effects and the anxiousness for absence of future care-provisions. In this paper are explored answers for the motives to leave independent living for lifetime, which give criteria for dwelling design decisions, suitable for older growing persons. Possible Answers Formulated is a dwelling type, independent living for lifetime. This dwelling type consists in a general dwelling, which is used during lifetime, and in rules for design decisions, that facilitate flexibility to mutations, needed to adapt the dwelling on eventual individual ambitions. Exploration of the answers to health threat, loneliness, lacking dwelling quality and absence is focused on solutions within the competence of dwelling design. Results The exploration of answers resulted in the 5 following conditions: (1) A dwelling type, independent for lifetime, flexible to the potential mutations in functional use as a result of non-pathologic- ageing inhabitants during its planned exploitation-time; (2) A dwelling-design method, with a circular decision loop for each design decision phase and decision notation, based on 2 types of decisions, for the Conditional Interval and for Material Selection. (3) A Knowledge Base Health within the decision loop, which relates health threat, growth conditions of disease agents, conditions for health risk reducing intervention and design alternatives. Explored is a method to select appropriate dwelling related diseases; (4) Dwelling environment design, that has a well-known and clear planning; (5) A perspective for independent living for life span; Discussion Extreme sustainability does not automatically imply a healthy living environment. Plead is a change of focus in sustainability back towards the initial goal for sustainability; the offer of a healthy and sane living environment for humans on the long run.