Development of inclusive housing: toward a multisensory design approach

Design of a proper residence in order to satisfy the users’ needs has been always a complicated task. People spend quite a long time at their homes and various activities carry out there; therefore, the designed spaces have to consider a vast variety of characteristics both physically and mentally. Researchers state that considering fixed dimensions for human bodies in the architectural design is not an efficient policy. Instead, the diversity of physiques has to be taken into attention. The theory of inclusive design regards the spaces design in this way and attempts to find practical resolutions for this goal. Disabled people are among the users whose needs are often ignored in ordinary buildings design or separate spaces are often considered for them which are in contrary to the social justice principles. Research Question: The main question of this study is how residential complexes could respond to a wider range of users’ needs.

Pursuing this approach, this research tries to determine the design-related properties of residential spaces to provide an improved performance to consider the particular aspects of the disabled people. First, at the qualitative stage of the research, a comprehensive investigation of the disabled people (mobility and sensory impairments) needs and human senses has been carried out through the relevant resources and the necessary qualities of such spaces were achieved. As a result of this phase, design recommendations on the basis of multi-sensorality principles were extracted depending on the individual disabilities. In the following step, the aforementioned space characteristics were examined by four main target groups via the researcher-made questionnaire; including the people with physical, visual, and hearing disabilities as well as healthy ones. The questionnaires were distributed among 384 people divided in four groups of 96 in the Disabled People's Recreation Centers as well as residential complexes. The gathered data was utilized to test the research hypotheses and the satisfaction level of all four respondent groups regarding visual, hearing, tactile, and sensory enrichment were measured. Due to the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, the normality of the data distribution was specified and the corresponding parametric or non-parametric tests were applied for each data groups. For normal distributed and non-normal distributed data T-test and binomial test were considered, respectively. Nine sub-hypotheses of ten were confirmed and one of them, respecting application of textures in walls and floors, was disapproved.

According to the results gained from the survey phase, proper design solutions were presented in both shared and private residential areas in order to meet the highest amount of satisfaction among four target groups. A number of design techniques are suggested for exterior spaces; e.g. two contrasting light and dark colors for buildings to distinguish different zones for people with visual impairments or stained glass in bright colors for canopies and staircase envelopes to indicate different building entries. Also, in interior spaces applying various colors and geometric shapes in the perimeter envelope to filter the light inside the room and use of thin layers of floor coverings could specify space borders. The research findings show that several design techniques could be assigned to different zones of residential spaces to maximize the convenience of most user categories and proceed toward the theory of design for all.