May 2000 Access For Everyone Nashville Tennessean, Home Section, May 7, 2000 Good design is universal - it's not a style, it's a concept When Nashvillian Gaydee Weller started looking for a condominium, she knew she wanted something open and spacious, but she just couldn't find it. "So many places are so cut up," she says. "Some of the rooms are unusable." When she finally did find something she liked, she basically had to start from scratch. The condo was gutted, and with the help of Nashville interior designer Keith Lightsey of Colour Corps, the layout was completely re-worked using many principles of a concept called universal design. The goal of universal design, which is being incorporated into more and more homes, is to make things more accessible to more people. For example, a kitchen built using the principles of universal design wood suit the needs of an able-bodied person, as well as the needs of a physically challenged person. Universal design, a term coined by the late Ron Mace at the Center for Universal Design at North Carolina State University, features elements such as no steps, wider hallways, walkways or doors, levers instead of door knobs, non-slip floors, roomier garages, showers and baths with no steps or "walls" to step over and low or no thresholds as you go from room to room. It's a different way of thinking about design, says Valerie Fletcher, executive director of Adaptive Environments Center, Inc., a Boston-based non-profit founded in 1978. "Universal design shouldn't mean anything. It's not a distinctive style. It's a way of dealing with design." In Weller's case, her goal was make her living space more user-friendly. "Basically the whole idea was to make the house easily livable and keep things down to a minimum," Weller says. "I don't want a fussy house." She also notes she didn't really think about universal design when her condo was renovated. "I just wanted openness," Weller says. "I would have to equate accessibility with being open and free flowing, which is where I was coming from." In fact universal design simply means design that works - not design that looks "different". Some modern inventions that many of us simply take for granted were created in response to a need for universal design, says Charles A. Riley, II, editor of WE Magazine, a national magazine for people with disabilities. Take automatic garage door openers, for example. They were developed when a person couldn't lift a heavy door. In a sense, Riley says, universal design has "raised the bar" when it comes to industrial, architectural, and yes, interior design. Riley, who is the author of the recently published book High Access Home, sees a more mainstream acceptance of some of the every day universal design elements such as ramps. He notices more people, disability or not, opting to use the ramp instead of the stairs at the mall. "It's simply easier," he says. |