Designing for Livable Housing

About this course.

Livable housing means homes deliberately designed to be easy and safe to approach, enter, move around and live in for people of all ages and abilities — not just for the fit, young and able-bodied occupant that much conventional housing has quietly assumed. It matters because Australia's population is ageing, more people live with disability or temporary injury, and almost everyone benefits from a home that works when circumstances change: a pram, a walking frame, a broken leg, a visiting grandparent, or simply growing older in the home you already own. Livable housing is about designing homes that adapt to people across their lives, rather than forcing people to adapt to homes — or to move out — when their needs change.

The starting point is a simple observation about how most housing has traditionally been built. For decades, the default Australian home was designed around an implicit "standard" occupant: someone who can climb steps, grip a round doorknob, step over a hobless shower kerb, squeeze through a narrow doorway, and manage a bathroom with no room to turn. This works well enough for that occupant, but it quietly excludes or inconveniences a very large number of people, and it turns predictable life events — an injury, pregnancy, ageing, a family member with disability — into a crisis of access within a person's own home. Livable housing challenges that default by designing for the full range of people who will actually use the home over its long life.