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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Neveen Hamza
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
The need to increase the purpose built dementia care homes raises the profile of environmental building design considerations and how they relate to reducing agitation in dementia patients. Critical to the increasing population with dementia, is a need to change the social perceptions of mental health facilities as linked to the design of asylums and prison architecture. The availability of facilities that educate, rehabilitate and provides therapeutic and healing environments is a need for both patients and their carers. Literature suggests that well designed environments for a small group of patients in a home like environment influences dementia patients’ behavioural attitude and aid in retention of physical abilities to move within the spaces and reduces agitation levels. (Lawton,2001,and Nagari, 2016). This is a preliminary review of research published between 2010- 2017 linking the impact of building design decisions to environmental effects on dementia patient behaviours in care homes. It is argued that in the pursuit for decreasing energy consumption by design and building fabric specifications of these homes, more research and a deeper understanding of environmental health related guidelines need to be considered before the building is built. A central role for building performance evaluation and modelling needs to be included in the design approval process that necessitates further research on ranges of daylight, lighting, thermal comfort and acoustic levels to be achieved. This research reviews literature relating the quality of life of dementia patients to the quality of the designed space and the environment it creates.
Author(s): Hamza N
Editor(s): Roaf S
Publication type: Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstract)
Publication status: Published
Conference Name: 33rd International Conference Passive Low Energy Architecture PLEA 2017
Year of Conference: 2017
Number of Volumes: 3
Print publication date: 09/10/2017
Acceptance date: 06/07/2017
Date deposited: 12/10/2017
Publisher: Network for comfort and Energy Use in Buildings (NCEUB).
URL: https://plea2017.net/
Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item
ISBN: 9780992895754
