HEALTHY ARCHITECTURE FOR AGEING POPULATION

With our research comparing people in their sixties and seventies to people above the age of eighty, we aim to define and develop their maximum quality of life, taking into account the practical knowledge of their ways of life, needs and housing requirements. People who maintain optimal functionality, that is, autonomy and personal independence, have a better quality of life compared to those in situations of dependence. Adequately planning the environment and physical surrounding for the ageing population is vital in achieving these objectives.

The research in this field focuses on three aspects: the study and development of the salutogenic model,  the model of heritage in health and the creation of maps or labelling in the area of assets in health. From this point of view, well-being is one of the main objectives of Healthy Architecture, which focuses on two basic elements: feeling well and working properly. Therefore, architecture has the ability to influence how people relate to their environments, creating scenes that favour a health way of life.

Well-being is intimately linked to the ways living organisms interact with their environments, which produce a series of stimulants on the body that manifest continually and subconsciously and that have a cumulative effect on the living organism. Light, temperature, sound, materiality and the ability to generate community spaces constitute tools or project material for Healthy Architecture. We can extend the findings and results obtained from research focusing on elderly peoples’ environments to the rest of society with the consequent added value that such work entails.

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