Design employing a more compassionate architecture

The ageing of the population has highlighted the need for inclusive and enabling societies. This, in turn, has created a market for new sectors of the economy to target products and services towards increasing personal autonomy and inclusivity. However, argues Dr Evangelia Chrysikou, lecturer and Programme director of the new MSc Healthcare Facilities course at the Bartlett Real Estate Institute, UCL, in London, considerably more thought must also be given to making the built environment, and a variety of public and private spaces, more ‘inclusive’ than has been evident to date.

The ageing population, and the increasing pressure and burden that that greater longevity places on healthcare services, with the likelihood that as people grow older, they will be more subject to illness and disease, is a well-known and extremely well-rehearsed phenomenon both in the UK, and many other European countries. Today, advances in diagnosis, medicine, and the treatment of numerous diseases – including heart disease and many cancers – continue apace, while assistive, oftensensor-based technologies offer significant potential to enable older people to live independently for longer. While such developments are welcome, and to date developers of assistive technologies have perhaps only scratched the surface in terms of what they can do, as long as the built environment remains our physical context, we need buildings to be fit for purpose. However – I would argue – there are many examples where this is not currently the case; some of our building stock limits opportunities for meaningful and autonomous lives, contributing to increased loneliness and isolation in old age, as well, potentially, as problems with physical health.

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