A BARRIER FREE FUTURE

 

We know that Singapore has implemented barrier free requirements for new building and ask for existing buildings to be better equipped since 1990. Perhaps our first glimpse or graphic universal design was found as a gag in Mad Magazine spoof on the movie Star Wars.

 

A MAD Look at Star Wars (MAD #197, March 1978)

 Today, Singapore is probably the easiest country to travel to because you can wheel your 28" luggage to anywhere urban between public transport nodes.

 

Venues that involves the common public are required to provide for handicap and seniors to utilize.

While there are plentiful documents illustrating how the space requirements enables barrier free/ universal design use, there is still a need for understand the culture of being on a wheel chair.

 

 

 

While there have been some

effort for the public housing to incorporate Universal Design, most apartments still don't really comply.

HDB attempt for Universal Design for 2 room Apartment Built to Order(whatever that means really)

The rest of the mass housing type on the whole dont really support independent wheel chair living and requires the wheelchair access especially for the bathroom to be an aided wheel chair which means some one pushes the chair for you.

 In Japanese TV Series PERFECT WORLD, wheelchair bound architect Itsuki Ayukawa (played by Tori Matsuzaka) stayed in an apartment that that gave him accessibility to live independently.

 Here the character have a lay by space at the entrance of his apartment here he changes his wheelchair to move around in the home. This way the dirt on the wheels found on the wheelchair used outside of home does not invade the interior further.

His apartment is interesting furnished by the furniture company ACTUS

Eccentric shaped dining table allows the wheelchair movement with a better flow. Sliding doors were used so that the door panel does not take up valuable space

studio set shot of the TV series

The kitchen table top is about 800mm in height so that a wheelchair bound or a standing person can both use it.

studio set shot of the accessible kitchen

 

There was also a chamfered corner wall to allow a better flow for wheelchair movement.

 Ayukawa however, still required a care giver to visit him to handle certain chores which may be difficult for him to deal with such as floor cleaning, changing light bulbs and doing laundry.

He drove a car that was totally hand operated and loaded and unloaded his wheelchair on his own.

 His wheelchair was placed in the back seat which he carried from the street to the back by lowering his back rest.

Total Hand operated car (note wheelchair in the backseat)

 

Example of what an Adaptive Car Driver seat view looks like. They vary based on the what the disability the individual has.
 

In the TV series Ayukawa was reluctant to service a couple where the husband was a chef and the wife was wheelchair bound with possible impending death owing to illness. His reluctance was because the commitment of building a barrier free landed house had financial implication and was obstruction to the goal of the husband who worked his life savings eventually  to open his own restaurant. The wife was also not agreeable to spend the savings that will kill her husband's dream of running his own restaurant.

Ayukawa being wheelchair bound understood the implications but eventually proposed an idea that would satisfy the husband wishes of providing a barrier free environment for his ailing wife with having the wife know she didn't crush his dream.

His solution was a large living/ dining / kitchen space that opens to an outdoor deck so that everyone can move freely in this space.

The free space could also double up as a restaurant on weekends or when the wife is no more with him. (note: certain Japanese landed homes can be mixed used at street level). The message here has got a universal appeal that the work live shophouse allows you to monitor home matters better. So together with the COVID pandemic, mixed used urbanscape is convincingly becoming a necessity.

Ayukawa also prescribes that the couple need not stay in the same room because their daily timeline would differ causing sleep disorders. When in such time that the wife is facing critical illness, the bedroom should not be shared as there will be other equipment and caregivers involved.

This TV series has been informative and gave insights to the issues concerning Universal Design. It is elaborated issues on love and sex for couples involving handicap people.

So why watch a Japanese TV series instead maybe German Netflix How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast) that features Lanny Sender as a wheelchair character? That is because a German teenager barely out of high school owning an adaptive VW Tiguan with automated wheelchair loader would be uncommon of a teenager albeit the character had access to money to buy the car from drugs he sold. 

The German TV series also did not put enough focus on accessibility features as much as Perfect World because the story was not about adaptive living.

The Japanese urbanscape is also closer to Singapore issues such as small residential space and families that are involved in their issues.

Much as the actor Tori Matsuzaka could not pull off the typecast of an architect like the character played by Hiroshi Abe in Mada Kekkon Dekinai Otoko (He who Cant get Married) which we had on a different blog , the gist of the TV series tried to identify deeper issues concerning the life of wheel chair bound person.

It is interesting that the Japanese community is discovering separate room for husband and wife as a household solution to maintain stability and perhaps an accelerated version of a Singapore solution too. While independent/ assisted living may not seem apparent to you, always remember, anyone can have an injury causing them to be wheel chair bound, and since life expectancy is much longer now, there is a good chance most of us maybe wheelchair bound.

Practice your wheelie today.