text/Chen Yuqi
When Zhang Jinglin was 18 years old, all the thresholds in the family were knocked out.
That year, Zhang Jinglin's grandmother suddenly suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, causing him to hemiplegia on her right and . From then on, she took a wheelchair. As long as there are thresholds, grandma cannot pass by herself. After being discharged from the hospital, my grandmother seemed to be trapped in the room and sat for the whole day.
In order to allow grandma to enter and exit freely at home and integrate into family life, Zhang Jinglin and her family decided to knock down the threshold of the whole house. After graduating from university, Zhang Jinglin also joined the emerging industry of barrier-free and aging-friendly home design.
"2021 National Aging Development Bulletin" shows that as of the end of 2021, the national elderly population aged 60 and above was 267.36 million, accounting for 18.9% of the total population.
Among these 267 million elderly people, about 90% of the elderly choose to be at home for elderly care, about 7% rely on the community to support elderly care, and only 3% of the elderly live in institutions for elderly care.
In China, home-based elderly care is still the most important way of elderly care. The elderly population is becoming larger and the housing problems of the elderly are attracting much attention. In February this year, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and four other departments proposed to support 2 million elderly, disabled and disabled families in special difficulties to implement aging-friendly transformation during the 14th Five-Year Plan period.
Aging-friendly transformation is not just as simple as installing handrails. Complex remote controls, thresholds that may cause to fall , sockets that need to bend over... Due to the general lack of barrier-free facilities, these ordinary details at home may become stumbling blocks in the process of aging.
Renovate a home for 200 million elderly people. How to create a living environment that is more suitable for the elderly in the elderly?
Starting from the breaking of the threshold
Jenny and his parents live in two places, and his brother's residence is more than 10 kilometers away from his parents' home. Although Jenny's parents are in their 80s, they are in good health and can take care of themselves.
My parents’ old house is on the second floor, there is not enough sunshine and there is no elevator in the building. Although it is only two floors, my mother's knee joint is not good. When her legs hurt, she is unwilling to go out.
Beike Research Institute's "2021 Community Home-based Elderly Care Current Situation and Future Trend Report" shows that 65.5% of the elderly choose to live independently (one person lives alone or with his wife). Among the elderly aged 80 and above, the proportion of independent living among the elderly reaches 48%. More and more elderly people are actively choosing to live alone, and the aging-friendly transformation of housing is closely related to the living safety of the elderly.
Sunshine, elevator, convenience of life - For these three indicators, Jenny ignored his parents' opposition and bought a small house in another nearby community three years ago and renovated it according to the requirements of aging. Although the house is only about 50 square meters, the floors are high and the sun is abundant. The vegetable market is downstairs, making life more convenient.
Jenny first found a designer, but she was not satisfied with the design plan given by the designer. "They are too young and have no experience in designing the elderly."
So, Jenny chose to design it himself. Aging-friendly design, for a longer-term view: considering the possibility of using a wheelchair in the future, Jenny flattened the floor of the home, without a threshold, and the width of all doors is more than 70 cm; the bathroom does not adopt a separate shower room design with dry and wet and dry shower curtains, but uses a shower curtain to facilitate the caregiver to help take a bath in the future.
There are more details to consider in the transformation for aging: the elderly like to stock up on things, and the home should use an overall cabinet to expand the storage space; the elderly sleep lightly and easily affect each other, so it is best to sleep in separate beds. If one party needs to use care bed in the future; because it is inconvenient for the elderly to bend over, Jenny installed the sockets at 80 cm high.
Preventing falls is another key point of transformation. Data from China's disease monitoring system shows that falling has become the first cause of injury death among elderly people over 65 years old in my country. According to estimates, more than 40 million elderly people in my country have at least one fall every year, about half of which occur at home.
Dalong is an architect. The task of redecorating the nursing home for his wife's grandparents naturally fell on his shoulders.
In Dalong's design, there is no height difference in the whole house, and the more common water blocking strip is abandoned in the bathroom."After all, low-probability events such as waterlogging blockage and overflow are more important than the risks and convenience of entering and exiting the elderly every day."
Dalong designed bathroom abandons water blockers that may cause fall (photo provided by the interviewee)
In addition, the height of the toilet should be slightly higher, which is convenient for the elderly to get up and sit up; the room uses sliding doors to make it easier for the elderly to enter and exit in wheelchairs; the kitchen storage cabinet uses pull-down hardware pull-out basket to prevent the elderly from climbing up and down to get things, and the walls are made of an overall wall for easy scrubbing and care.
Kitchen Design (Photo provided by the interviewee)
In addition to creating a living environment that is more suitable for the elderly, to meet the emotional needs of the elderly, more personalized transformation is needed.
Due to work reasons, Zhao Xiao did not live with his mother. He hired a full-time nursing staff for his mother, but it was inevitable that he could not satisfy his wishes. In 2019, he began to think about how to use smart homes to achieve nursing care.
Although she is 90 years old, Zhao Xiao's mother is still very outgoing and likes to chat with people, but she doesn't know how to use a smartphone. In addition, her legs and feet are inconvenient and her ears are almost alone during the day.
In order to facilitate his mother to watch TV, he glued all the irrelevant buttons on the remote control with tape, leaving only the on key, volume key and channel change key.
Last year, Zhao Xiao’s company released a voice smart screen. He found that he could use the voice smart screen to initiate video calls to his mother at any time, and the other party could answer without control, and the volume was also high enough.
With the help of smart home, Zhao Xiao connects the air conditioner, temperature sensor, camera, and air purifier to his mobile phone. Zhao Xiao picks up his phone almost every hour and uses the camera to see what his mother is doing.
In order to prevent his mother from feeling lonely, he also installed a camera at his home. He turned on the surveillance APP on his mother's mobile phone, and stuck on the other buttons, leaving only the power button. As long as the screen is turned on, his mother can see him at any time.
is more than handrail
Zhang Jinglin, 23, originally studied Japanese at university. After graduation, her grandmother's previous experience of being sick has been lingering in her mind, making her start to think about accessibility and aging-friendly home design.
Accessible exhibition hall designed by Zhang Jinglin and his team (photo provided by the interviewee)
In China, home-based elderly care is still the most important way of elderly care. In 2021, Wang Haidong, Director of the Aging and Health Department of the National Health Commission, introduced that the elderly care for the elderly in my country has formed a "9073" pattern, that is, about 90% of the elderly are at home, about 7% of the elderly rely on the community to support the elderly care, and 3% of the elderly live in institutions to care for the elderly.
But Zhang Jinglin gave another definition of "9073": 90% of people do not know about aging-friendly transformation, 7% have heard of it, and only 3% of people really understand it. "When everyone heard about the aging-friendly transformation, their first reaction was to install handrails and shower chairs in the toilet."
"Why should the aging-friendly transformation? It's because I didn't think enough and didn't have good enough when I was young." Many customers found Zhang Jinglin's team out of urgent needs, such as the elders who suddenly had cerebral infarction and were hospitalized in the bathroom.
"Many elderly people will spend their whole lives and don't know what they need." Zhang Jinglin introduced that the design and transformation of elderly-friendly homes begin with evaluation. By evaluating the elderly's daily behavioral perception ability, mental perception ability, and safety level of the physical environment of the current residence, we can understand the needs of the elderly.
The elderly with different characteristics also have different emphasis on the aging-friendly transformation. Zhang Jinglin gave an example. Elders with cognitive impairment need to strengthen their memory of functional partitions, such as blue lights corresponding to rest areas; elderly people with reduced vision will experience weak , and their visual area will turn yellow and narrow, so they should be closer to their visual needs in the choice of light color temperature; elderly people with hearing impairment need more visual assistance, such as the lights may mean that someone is knocking on the door.
Accessible exhibition hall designed by Zhang Jinglin and his team (photo provided by the interviewee)
trillion market, waiting for an explosion?
Counselor of the State Council and former vice minister of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development Qiu Baoxing estimated in an interview with a reporter from " Half Monthly Talk about " that the market size of the existing 40 billion square meters of old buildings in my country can reach 15 trillion yuan. According to data from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the direct market share of the aging-friendly transformation of home environments is about 3 trillion yuan.
"2021 Community Home-based Elderly Care Current Situation and Future Trend Report" shows that more than half of the elderly live in houses over 20 years of housing. This type of house is inherently inadequate in design, has a low elevator configuration rate, and lacks barrier-free facilities.
is imminent to carry out aging-friendly transformation for old communities.
In April 2019, the first pilot project for the aging-friendly renovation of old communities in Beijing was launched. The project was funded by the Haidian District Government and carried out aging-friendly renovation for 99 elderly people over 80 years old and severely disabled elderly people families; in 2020, "providing family aging-friendly renovation for 5,000 disabled and semi-disabled elderly people" was included in the livelihood of Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province; in 2021, Shanghai comprehensively promoted the aging-friendly renovation of the home environment, and the elderly who meet certain conditions were given a subsidy of up to 3,000 yuan.
In March this year, 15 departments jointly issued the " "14th Five-Year Plan for Healthy Aging" , which clearly stated that it is necessary to accelerate the construction of barrier-free environments and the transformation of residential aging-friendly renovations.
"Age-friendly" consumption awareness has emerged. Relevant data shows that in the past year, the transaction volume of JD.com's overall elderly-friendly business increased by more than 100% year-on-year. The search index of sitting showers increased by 32 times year-on-year from 2021 to 2022; the search index of elderly toilets and wall-mounted bathing folding stools increased by 60 times and 204 times year-on-year respectively.
But so far, Zhang Jinglin and her team's main income still comes from government and enterprise projects, such as the community's elderly service center. In the C-end market, the current aging-friendly transformation market is still stuck in at the product level, and there are few overall solutions.
Every month, Zhang Jinglin receives 10 to 25 evaluation and consultation orders, but there are only one or two design and transformation orders. "Customers prefer to buy some products to install at home, such as bathrooms. Small areas and rapid transformations are more common, while few choose whole-house renovations."
Since starting their business, Zhang Jinglin has contacted many investors. "(Investors) are generally optimistic about this. They either hope that we can develop products that are exciting, standardized, replicable and quickly promote, or they hope that we can do a good job in market education."
She commented that the aging-friendly transformation is still in the stage where the product and service providers are hot, but consumers do not buy it. "This market has always been called a trillion-dollar market, but it requires the participation of consumers who really pay money."
Everyone will eventually grow old
70% of the clients consulted by Zhang Jinglin's team are the children of the elderly, and the rest are elderly people who are injured or their husbands to avoid accidents again. Many clients require confidentiality to their parents and tell them when they come to the door that the assessment is not cost. "Our elderly people are too hard and too patient, and they feel that as long as they can make ends meet, there is no need to change." During the communication with the elderly, Zhang Jinglin found that many elderly people were particularly "not convinced by their old age", saying that they were very young and were unwilling to admit that they needed aging-friendly transformation. "I'm only 80, this is the new 18," said some old people.
Zhang Jinglin believes that as the fastest and most advanced Asian country in the Asian country with the fastest and highest degree of population aging, its commercial promotion of aging-friendly transformation is largely due to changes in concepts, and the difficulty of market education has also been reduced. But in China, whether to do it or who to do it is a problem, and the preliminary decision-making process is very long. Therefore, the promotion of home-friendly aging transformation in my country also needs to rely on the popularization of the concept of aging.
In addition, compared with advanced foreign products, it is difficult to meet the needs of the elderly in terms of quality and function.Office of the National Aging Work Committee Former inspector and researcher at the Elderly Science Research Association of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Tang Zhenxing once introduced that there are more than 60,000 elderly products in the world, more than 40,000 elderly products in Japan, and only more than 2,000 elderly products independently developed in my country.
Zhang Jinglin gave an example. At present, the anti-slip floors in China mainly use anti-slip coatings, but Japanese products also consider the ability to resist impact. Once an elderly person falls, special-material floors have the function of buffering.
Accessible exhibition hall designed by Zhang Jinglin and his team (photo provided by the interviewee)
Tsinghua University School of Architecture Postdoctoral Qin Ling introduced in his research that the construction of aging-friendly housing in Japan has gone through nearly 60 years of exploration and practice, and has formed a relatively mature development and construction model. Japan has subdivided the types and needs of residential and facilities for the elderly, and has successively issued many relevant architectural design standards such as the "Guidelines for the Design of Residential Housing for the Elderly", and used aging as an important evaluation indicator for residential performance, and has issued various incentive policies such as financial subsidies, tax incentives, and financing policies.
The evaluation dimensions related to "aging-friendly" in the residential performance representation system (Photo source: "The Construction of Aging-friendly Housing: Japanese Experience and Inspiration")
At the 3rd China Aging Society Summit, Qinling said that under the background of deep aging in my country, "aging-friendly" should not only exist in special designs, but should become a conscious awareness that covers all aspects of the design.
Everyone will eventually grow old. Zhang Jinglin believes that every sound person may become a temporary obstacle in certain situations, and promoting barrier-free construction can benefit everyone. "We are promoting barrier-free construction today, in fact, for tomorrow's self."
(At the request of the interviewee, Jenny, Dalong, and Zhao Xiao are pseudonyms)
(Editor: Qi Mengying Proofreader: Yan Jingning)
