Course Description
Join us for an insightful webinar exploring the origins of universal design and the role that universal/inclusive design is playing in housing today. The continued growth in the number of older adults in the US won’t peak until after the middle of this century. This has caused advocates, designers, and policy makers to reconsider housing accessibility provisions that were derived in the 20th century (responding to the surge in the numbers of people with disabilities) and to look anew at improving the range of housing options for older adults across all housing typologies. This session will explore the sometimes-confusing nomenclature of universal design and will look at innovative design approaches in the multifamily sector as well as 1-3 family housing.
Learning Objectives:
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Participants will gain insights into the concept of universal design and how it arose from decades of work on accessible design standards.
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Participants will understand the 20th and 21st century’s demographic underpinnings that continue to drive novel ideas in housing to better accommodate our changing society.
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Participants will learn about specific housing design strategies and home features that will look good, work well, and be marketable to a broad audience.
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Participants will explore the distinctions between the terms, accessible design, universal design, inclusive design, age friendly design, and more.
Speakers:
Richard Duncan, MRP, Executive Director, UDI & BLD
Erick Mikiten, AIA LEED-AP
Richard Duncan is the Executive Director of the Universal Design Institute and the Better Living Design Institute in Asheville, North Carolina. Richard is a Planner who has spent nearly 40 years in the field of architectural and product accessibility and universal design in residential, public, and transportation environments. He has extensive experience in the design, costs, materials, and products in residential and non-residential settings. His work includes the issues of affordable housing and home and repair financing and transportation accessibility as well as community design for constituencies that include people with disabilities and aging households.
At all points in his career, Richard has observed that most of us benefit from the many usability improvements to the built environment that have occurred over the past 60 years; and that individual and collective health benefits can result. These benefits occur at all scales: from the design of home products that are simple and easy to use to the design of communities (and community services) that support people’s full and continued integration in community life.
Erick Mikiten, AIA LEED-AP
Erick Mikiten, AIA, founded Mikiten Architecture in 1991 to bring higher levels of artistic design, sustainability, and Universal Design to affordable housing and mixed-use projects. As a wheelchair-riding, hard-of-hearing architect, he realized that 30 years after the ADA came into effect, the profession needs to stretch beyond those basic requirements. In 2021 he created a new firm - a coalition of lived-experience designers and experts - to champion new thinking about combining great design and great inclusion, called The Art of Access.