Invisible Disabilities
Orfield has spent the past 25 years studying cognitive and perceptual disabilities (invisible disabilities), which are the 70 percent of disabilities that are not obvious to the observer. As the first firm in the country to aggregate the number of disabilities as over 50% of people in all building types, the lab does not believe in a non-disability project. The population, which includes Aging ,Dementia, Autism, Mental illness, ADHD, PTSD, Sensory Processing Disorder, Blindness, deafness, and many more, is seldom accepted by the ADA, nor the general public. While many in the design field believe that design for disabilities is in contradiction to design for normal typicals or normals, Orfield has determined that disability-based design is a preferred approach for everyone. Most folks with invisible disabilities exhibit some level of hypersensitivity that needs to be considered in the design of spaces that they occupy. When designing for these populations, we need to reduce the multi-sensory stimuli in the environment and we need to reduce the visual and cognitive complexity that the occupant needs to do this. Our orientation is not about their disability diagnosis, but rather about their quality of life.
On the Western Homes "Cottages" (pictured above), Orfield was contacted by AHTS Architects, to introduce the CEO of Western Home Communities, to their process of Research-Based-Design. As a result, the lab was retained to apply their new Aging and Dementia Standards (Acoustics, Daylighting, Lighting, Thermal Comfort and Indoor Air Quality) to this new 'household care' style campus, under an Intellectual Property license for this project. Following the completion of the dementia cottages, this project was submitted to the International Dementia Conference in Manchester, England, which was administered by the Dementia Centre at the University of Stirling in Scotland, which is recognized as the top program globally.
The Cottages won the top Innovation Award, being selected from all projects submitted worldwide.
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