Maryland, home to the future; Or at least the Future Home

"Universal Design is about building for all people, taking into consideration our children and our grandparents."

Dave Ward, curator and resident of Future Home, believes so immensely in the functionality of universal design, that when he decided to build his home to fit his needs (Dave suffered an accident that left him a quadriplegic), he resolved to give up his privacy in order to make his home a national living demonstration.

The idea for Future Home came sixteen years ago when Dave was working with his rehab specialist and Veterans for Medical Engineering (VME). Out of his need to buy a home that would allow him full mobility and functionality, came the inspiration to create a place where he could fully integrate universal design and assistive technology to make living as comfortable as possible for both himself and visitors. However, since he was working one on one with VME to create individual devices specifically for his needs, he needed to come up with a way to create a home that could showcase the use of assistive technology products already on the market. For Dave, the answer to this need was simple- create a home for all individuals "who needed solutions to their daily living." By using locally found and affordable products, he could interface people with the AT market while still having VME help him modify these to most directly fit his specific needs through systems integration.

Future Home, rescued from demolition in 1986, is found on a quaint 26-acre site in Maryland's Gunpowder State Park. Listed by the Maryland Historical Registry, this home now represents the ideology of Universal Design. With a daily stream of visitors, from curiosity seekers and consumers to design students and architects, Dave is credited with creating one of the nations most "Intelligent Homes."

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The television room in Future Home comfortably makes seating space available for those who use wheelchairs and those who don't, as well as providing a coffee table that mechanically adjusts in height for everyone's use.

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The Future Home living room is fully equipped with automatic blinds and its own temperature gauge.

The significance of Future Home varies with each person that visits. For those who come to get ideas on making their homes more accessible, it serves as a quick course education and showcase in available AT on the market. But for those who come to study the form, function, and design of what the future house could look like, Future Home may be serving its most important function. Although universities teach architects how to build for visual appeal, Dave Ward feels that they also need to stress the importance of universal design. For him, "the biggest impact is on students," and it is they who hold the future of accessibility and the integration of society, literally, in their hands. "Architects today have got to start designing for the way people function in their homes." With one of the largest population groups, the baby boomers, moving into their fifties, universal design and assistive technology will need to begin to make its way into more and more homes. However, dispelling the myths surrounding accessible housing will not be so easy.

For many, the thought of accessible housing immediately brings to mind a place that is both unattractive and exclusive to individual disability needs. What many people don't realize is that universal design does not just cater to individuals in wheelchairs, but it also makes living easier for those with low vision or blindness, those who are hard of hearing or deaf, and those with cognitive and neurological disabilities. From adjusting room temperatures to turning on lights or opening up blinds, assistive technology fused with the correct design, can make it possible for every person to easily maneuver each of those tasks with minimal reliance on another person. In fact, with the proper design, the same accessibility functions that a person with a disability would use is often, in fact, more realistic for someone without a disability as well.

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The kitchen sink at Future Home allows someone in a wheelchair to roll right up to it as well as turn the water on with the switches on the counter to the right. This, in fact, would even make it easier for children and people with limited use of their arms to turn the water on.

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These kitchen cabinets lower and rise according to the need of the user.

Furthermore, AT is just as important to the family of the person that utilizes it as it is to the person him/herself. As long as families feel that their loved ones are capable and comfortable in their own home environments, there is no reason to take away the independence of individuals with disabilities. Perhaps though, the biggest myth surrounding universal design is that it is a far more expensive venture than most people are willing to spend.

When Future Home was first being designed fifteen years ago, the on-average cost of assistive technology, in order to make the home fully accessible, ran over $46,000. Today, on average, making a home accessible with AT costs anywhere from $8,500- $15,000. Because technology has become more prevalent and the market for AT has both expanded and become significantly more competitive, the costs have dramatically dropped. In fact, it would be cheaper for someone to make his/her home fully accessible than to pay a personal assistant for one year. However, AT and universal design will NEVER replace personal assistants and the human companionship that they bring, but it will allow individuals with disabilities to perform basic functions independently. And who wouldn't want their own independence?

Future Home has helped spur numerous other independent living projects around the country. It has helped those in the design field and those just looking for better answers to their needs find a place where design, AT, and a living aid have made it all possible for someone to work and live independently. If more people were to undertake the task of making a home accessible and if more architects were to focus on the needs of those buying homes, the possibilities for human interaction would be limitless, because ultimately, what Future Home is teaching is that universal design "opens up society so we can all be part of a community."


Future Home
12900 Jarretsville Pike
Phoenix, MD 21131
Curator: Dave Ward
410-666-0086
Cdavidward@aol.com
www.thefuturehome.net