Introduction

The idea that domestic dwellings might be conceived, designed and constructed so that the capacities, desires and needs of occupants continue to be met despite the many changes – physiological, social and emotional – that are likely to accompany advancing years appears attractive at a number of levels. Not least of these is the frequently expressed aspiration of older people themselves to avoid ‘special’ settings, such as residential and nursing homes, which, rightly or wrongly, are associated with loss of autonomy and agency if not with a more profound loss of self (Peace et al, 1997). Furthermore, the cost of special provision, entailing as it does the ongoing and spiralling labour costs of care assistance or skilled (and scarce) nursing care, impose a more or less explicit rationing on the allocation of places, which often extends to ostensibly ‘preventative’ domiciliary care (Allen et al, 1992). Together with demographic predictions, these factors are employed to justify a renaming, perhaps even a reconceptualisation, of the foundations on which the accommodation requirements of future cohorts might be constructed. Fundamentally such requirements must be inclusive of all groups in terms of gender, ethnicity, class and so on, and particularly of the whole life cycle.

Lifetime Homes, universal and transgenerational design, along with extra-care housing and assisted living, appear to offer dwelling places sufficiently flexible and adaptable to support the everyday lives of older people almost to the end of life, with or without specialist or other forms of help. That this is desirable as an ideal appears to be irrefutable since older people, along with policy makers and planners, subscribe to the importance of maintaining independence and identity, and of establishing and maintaining control in the domestic sphere (Sixsmith, 1986; Gurney and Means, 1993; Duncan, 1996). Whether this can be more than an ideal, even in the longer term, raises interesting questions. First, around the very complex nature of the relationship between people's material and psycho-social lives and their domestic environments. Second, questions arise as to the nature of architectural, design and policy interventions, and the place of personal agency in relation to the regulatory activity that has a bearing on living places.