Floortje Arnts – Enlightening Dementia
Winnaar Dutch Daylight Student Award 2024
Project type: Design
Enlightening Dementia
Floortje designed a care home specifically for people with dementia, incorporating daylight features that cater to their unique needs. By focusing on visual comfort and minimizing disruptions to circadian rhythms, her design aims to create a soothing and health-promoting environment for residents.
- Topic: design of a care home for people with dementia
- Method: implementation of dementia-friendly daylight features in the design
- Impact: higher visual comfort and less disruptions in circadian rhythms
Several studies have shown that the well-being of people who are physically and cognitively frail is affected by the exposure to cycle of day and night, to sunlight and view. However, people with dementia (PwD) in nursing homes, on the contrary, tend to have significantly less exposure to daylight than people living in the community. According to research, effective light doses stimulate the circadian cycles of PwD, which may positively affect the sleep-wake rhythm, depression, functional status, and behavioral problems in seniors with dementia. Besides lighting, thermal comfort is an important aspect of environmental design and is crucial with regards to seniors living with dementia. PwD have an increased sensitivity and reactivity to their environment as a consequence of the reduced ability to understand the implications of sensory experiences. This indicates the important role of the living environment, including the lighting and thermal environment, on enhancing the well-being of PwD.
This multi-disciplinary project aimed to explore and analyze the influence of light in the architectural design of a care facility on the well-being of PwD. The physical environmental needs of PwD with regards to (day)light and thermal comfort were described to allow for a living environment that supports the well-being of PwD. Moreover, the influence of design-decisions regarding (day)light was evaluated in terms of the (day)light requirements and the energy performance of a small-scale care facility for people with dementia. The extent of the role of sustainability in making the design-decisions was addressed.
The objective was to design a comfortable, energy-efficient and sustainable small-scale care facility that supports the well-being of PwD by implementing lighting strategies. The research question of this research was defined as: “In what ways can the architectural design of a small-scale care facility incorporate light as a tool to create a comfortable, energy-efficient and sustainable environment that positively influences the well-being of people living with dementia?”. In this project, the relations between light, well-being and architecture were investigated in-depth through several research methods. A literature review, a ‘daylight in architecture’ study and case studies were performed to develop a set of design guidelines that aim for an improved well-being of PwD in the design of a care facility.
The results allowed to identify a set of light requirements, architectural design guidelines and lighting design guidelines. A “Guide to Design” was developed to illustrate how the design guidelines can be applied in the design of a small-scale care facility for PwD. To exemplify the way that the lighting design guidelines can be implemented, a small-scale care facility for PwD in the Netherlands was designed.
The design was validated and optimized for the defined light requirements using building performance simulationprograms. Subsequently, the concepts of thermal comfort, energy-efficiency and sustainability were introduced and led to design recommendations that find a balance between the different aspects, while maintaining the light requirementsand architectural concept. The combination of the best optimization strategies was implemented in the optimized design of the small-scale care facility. In this final optimized design, light was used as a means to “design a brighter place for people with dementia”.