Design for ageing society, including outdoors, becoming more important

The trend towards nuclear families with children leaving home to start their own lives results in a more independent future for our senior citizens. The retired generation will become highly influential consumers of products and services.

Preparation for the new demographics, particularly the development of interior and exterior environments for elderly-friendly buildings where the senior members of society can lead a normal and healthy life with facilities designed to enhance their ability to participate in everyday life and recreational activities, is an important matter.

While lifestyle, perception and economic status develop along with progressing age, professional experience, financial stability and life anecdotes, a person’s visual acuity and mobility advance in the opposite direction. Age-related changes in body systems lead to the deterioration of visual ability, as the sharpness and accuracy of one’s perception of forms and colours dwindle, and sensitivity to light is heightened.

Such changes become obstacles in the everyday lives of senior citizens. Miscellaneous details such as the suitable brightness of interior lighting can have a positive impact on their physical and mental health. The choices of materials and colours as well as consideration of the plane and height of spaces can bring about greater convenience, comfort and safety.

The design of the exterior environment, which can potentially enhance one’s participation in various activities as physical and mental fitness is strengthened, should be done as an addition of the interior.

Studies have revealed that senior citizens’ outdoor activities, particularly taking strolls, are related to the physical condition of the environment.

However, diminishing physical strength becomes a limitation to mobility including sensitivity to a bad environment.

Compared with their Western counterparts, Thai senior citizens engage in considerably fewer outdoor activities. This possibly reflects how the design of the exterior environment in Thailand cannot fully answer the demands of the senior users.

Studies of the limitations of daily walks of the elderly in Greater Bangkok depict environmental issues of urban communities within the context of our society. Air pollution, climbing stairs to overpasses and the lack of public seating are what senior citizens find to be the main obstacles to their daily walking routine.

The design of elderly-friendly walkways has to highlight the importance of standardised physical features such as width, continuity and evenness of surfaces, since most outdoor activities are recreational walking or shopping at local stores.

As this consort of the population prefers the natural presence of trees and gardens in the urbanised environment, additional regulations that legally include public parks and green areas as parts of urban planning, aesthetic and functional improvements of the design of landscaping and sidewalks, local stores that can be easily accessed by walking, and personal safety are all key factors that can effectively motivate senior citizens to go out and participate more in outdoor activities.

These are only some of the ideas that can be developed and designed into successful products and services that will play significant parts in the preparation for the coming of the ageing society, for the better life of our loved ones and, indeed, for all of us.