Most Provocative

The building craze is over, but is a new craze underfoot: subditions? The housing boom lasted so long, it foiled us into a malaise of thinking that it was normal. “Oh yes, we’ll be breaking ground on another addition next week,” was spoken at many a dinner conversation. That or, “We’ve simply outgrown our 3,000 sq ft home and are moving to a bigger place.”

Well, those days are over and more frequently heard are remodeling conversations: new cabinet faces in t

Do you have a five-year plan? As it is close to New Years, how about a one-year plan for 2011? Those who make a plan are much more likely to achieve their goals than those who don’t. What about your company, what’s their plan? How about your country? Still with me? Or have you clicked outta here?

Go have a look at India’s Five Year Plans (Wikipedia link); maybe just look at the recent plan, the Eleventh 2007-2012 (scroll down). This is a country on the move. This is a country

Times have changed and immediate gratification is valued higher than long term planning. This is certainly one of the reasons universal design is slow in being widely adopted. Another is the reluctance to acknowledge our aging bodies. This is the denial of our becoming old, frail and helpless. Burr … shudder. I don’t like thinking about it any more than you.

When I consider denial, it’s not just my old age I deny. There is a long, long, long list of denials. I’d like to

In May 2008, I wrote the following:

“One day, there will be the ultimate universal design handbook. It will have well conceived answers to every design quandary, each achieved cost effectively and with elegance. No. That would be as if universal design was a destination, a place we arrive at where solutions were the intention of its creation. This notion that a checklist can be created pervades the present consciousness of legislators and building inspectors alike. We will have measures b

Have you raised a child?

I often wonder what I learned in school that was so great: geometry, endless history, exotic authors, extreme science? After years of school there was so much practical stuff that I didn’t know: how to cook, nutrition, conflict resolution, and child rearing. Simply bizarre, even absurd, that it was assumed that I would instinctually know what to do when shepherding a little being along the path to adulthood. Well, the good thing about school is that I did learn wh

Today’s partisan politics is like a bad marriage. The couple no longer communicates; instead, they undermine each other’s intentions by using any opposing position, even when it doesn’t support their own agenda.

President Obama wants to improve our health care system. He doesn’t have a perfect solution – it’s a work in progress. But, he knows it needs to change because the future of health care, if left at its present course, will be massive failure. Those op

I was struck by an article by Dr. Dr Sunil Bhatia in that way when a subject just doesn’t leave you alone – it kept popping up in my thoughts. Dr. Bhatia created and runs the Design For All Institute of India and publishes a monthly newsletter. He recently wrote about the invention of the measurement of time and its impact on human life; click here for the pdf article.

Long ago there were no means to measure time beyond the sun, moon and seasons. One can imagine that to be present i

In last week’s post, Universal Design: The 8th Principle, Part I, I departed from the more frequent discussions about how we physically “fit” in our environments and looked at the emotional landscape we have as a result of being perceived and judged as fitting in or not. Here is Part II:

Judgments form the foundation of our daily decision making, and are informed and adjusted by the present situation. Driving a car is a useful example: you learn the skills needed to drive, yet

An eighth principle would be a welcome and needed entry to the brilliant seven as created in 1997 by the North Carolina State University’s Center for Universal Design. Rather than only define the environment of a user, this eighth principle would address perception; those shared by the observer and the observed. How do we see others and how do they see us? Can we build in a way that levels the perceptual playing field in which all players are seen as equal?

I was recently asked if the New

Long ago there lived a happy family in the foothills of the Pyrenees. They raised livestock in the hills, mostly sheep and pig, and went into town once a week to trade their meats for supplies. The grandfather, too old for work, stayed in the home and helped care for his little grandson. The father toiled long days in the fields while the mother maintained order in the home. As the years passed the grandfather became increasingly difficult; at dinner he often pushed his plate off the table and g

Laura Claridge has just published a biography on Emily Post. To the delight of fans, Emily Post was quite the woman living in quite the time. To her detractors, Emily Post is still no more than an arbiter of manners including the extended pinky finger while quietly sipping tea.

It was in 1922 that Emily Post wrote her famous guide to social etiquette. Some people now perceive it as an obsolete set of behavioral rules for people in high society. However, this interpretation misses its theme: the

Being green has been around for a long time. However, in the last year a tipping point was reached and green is now visible everywhere. Governments are doing it, business is doing it, schools are teaching it, and even the “bad” guys, such as the petroleum industry, are dabbling with it. We are still on our way to the tipping point for universal design.

Much like being green, the tipping point is reached once we recognize that the box we are living in is just too small. Like any box,

Baby Boomers have had quit a run and it is far from over. They created civil rights, a sex revolution and aerobic exercise. Their presidents included Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush. Their health improved and they are living longer. They are wealthy. In 2007 the first boomer collected social security. As they enter what used to be known as their retirement years, it is up to them again to define who they are by defining what it means to be an older person.

Will Boomers draw on