Living with Alzheimer's disease: environmental design patterns for aging communities

Landscape can promote people’s health by supporting physical activity, offering restorative experiences, and providing opportunities for social interaction. Such benefits may be particularly important for the elderly people with Alzheimer’s disease, who, in general, have reduced mobility and cognitive abilities. As the Baby Boom generation grows older, we face an urgent need to provide landscapes that create healthy settings for elderly people who have or will have some day develop this disease. This thesis examines the psychological and physical needs of elderly people with Alzheimer’s disease by exploring the literature and reviewing precedents, then synthesizes this information by identifying a number of design priorities, patterns for a small-scale site. These priorities and patterns are then adapted to a larger scale setting, where temporary interventions for the landscape are explored. This thesis is an example of how a designer can gain in-depth practice at creating design guidelines that respond to scientific knowledge and specific human needs, create design patterns that increase elderly people’s health in different scales, and identify criteria for future design and research efforts.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.L.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Landscape Architecture

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Qu, Yi

Contributors dc:contributor

• Sullivan, William C.

• Alzheimer's disease
• environmental design
• neighborhood scale

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2011 Yi Qu

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/26211

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/26211