How Enclosure and Spatial Organization Affect Residents' Use and Experience of a Dementia Special Care Unit: A Case Study.

Aim:: We aim to gain insight into how a dementia special care unit is used and experienced by its residents and what design aspects are important therein.

Background:: In Flanders, housing for people with dementia evolves toward small-scale, homelike environments. As population aging challenges the affordability of this evolution, architects and other designers are asked to design dementia special care units that offer the advantages of small scaleness within the context of large-scale residential care facilities.

How architectural design affords experiences of freedom in residential care for older people.

Human values and social issues shape visions on dwelling and care for older people, a growing number of whom live in residential care facilities. These facilities' architectural design is considered to play an important role in realizing care visions. This role, however, has received little attention in research.

Offering architects insights into experiences of living with dementia: A case study on orientation in space, time, and identity.

Due to memory loss, people with dementia are increasingly disorientated in space, time, and identity, which causes profound experiences of insecurity, anxiety, and homesickness. In the case study presented in this article, we explored how architecture can support people in coping with this challenge. We took a novel approach to offer architects insights into experiences of living with dementia.

Mary's Little Worlds: Changing Person-Space Relationships When Living With Dementia.

With the case study presented in this article we explore how people with dementia experience and use their environment to expand our understanding of how architectural environments can improve their well-being. We focus on how relationships between people and spaces change for people with dementia. Using a qualitative analysis of three in-depth interviews with a woman living with dementia, we obtained an insider's perspective and a rich account of the changes in her life, including her lived experiences and interventions in her home environment.