Scott Rider, who has Parkinson’s disease, woke up at 3am one night with an idea for a new kind of house that could be adapted to the needs of people with physical limitations.
“The idea,” Rider told the Beaufort Gazette and Island Packet, “was to create a home that didn’t look like a home care facility.”
Rider passed on this vision, which he had 18 months ago, to Robert Turner of Habersham Land Co. and Moser Design Group, a residential designer.
The result is the Southern Living Adaptive Cottage, which is specifically designed to meet the needs of those with mobility issues or those who are ‘aging in place’. The open, well-lit plan is far from a nursing home or a hospital.
“We wanted it to be a beautiful place,” said Eric Moser of Moser Design Group, who designed it, “that everyone would want to live in.”
The three-bedroom, three-bathroom home in Habersham, a community of 1,600 north of Beaufort, has special designs and finishes that allow someone like Rider, who has physical limitations, to live more independent, but it looks and feels like a “normal” house, and that’s on purpose.
According to those involved in its design and construction, the Adaptive Cottage bridges the gap between everyday design and a fully ADA-compliant home, and can be adapted to the changing needs or conditions of the people who live there. For example, wheelchair ramps, or grab bars, can easily be added later.
“It’s just about being more mindful of how people are going to use the house,” says Allen Patterson of Allen Patterson Builders, who built it.
The ways in which home design is different can be subtle and simple: hallways are wider, room doors slide, and there’s more shelf space in the bathroom that would just be a space. wall under the typical design.
Or advanced: the water temperature in the shower can be adjusted at the touch of a button. The doneness of a roast in the oven can be checked by watching via a phone app.
Clever: Instead of having to raise your hand to pull a shirt out of a hanger in the closet, a bar can be lowered to floor level for easy access.
Convenient: Zero-entry showers. This means that there are no obstacles on the floor, such as the edge of a shower or a bathtub, preventing access. And every room has windows on at least two or three walls, improving lighting. “The older we get, the more light we need,” Patterson said.
A separate entrance is available for adult children, a carer or a ‘care partner’.
“They can come and go without interrupting my life, and vice versa,” says Rider. “I think it’s huge.”
Moser, of the Moser Design Group, says homes today are often designed with a typical immediate family in mind. However, more and more families are multigenerational, he says, and may have older parents and children or a caregiver living in the same home. This changing reality should be represented in home designs, he says. An example is adding the “lockout”, or a separate entry.
The chalet’s adaptive design, says Moser, provides the flexibility to accommodate these living conditions.
Moser Design is already working on producing replicas of the Habersham model, with some modifications.
southern lifewhich collaborates with Rider, the Parkinson Foundation and the project design team are selling copies of the adaptive living house plan, with a portion of the proceeds from the sale going to the Parkinson’s Foundation. Sid Evans, the magazine’s editor, said he hopes the project will put accessibility at the forefront of conversations in the building community.
Parkinson’s disease awareness is dear to Rider, who served as a financial advisor for 30 years until the disease forced him into retirement. He notes that someone is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease every nine seconds. He hopes the project will raise awareness and fund treatment.
People with Parkinson’s need independence and collaboration, says Rider, which the adaptive chalet can provide.
The beauty of the project, Rider added, is that it has also started a conversation about ways homes can be modified in ways that allow people to “age in place”. Aging in place means living as long as possible in the residence of your choice.
habersham is a walkable mixed-use development with 850 homes, five restaurants and a spa with neighborhoods and parks and homes with porches where walking and biking are emphasized and speed limits reduced and streets narrow slow down motor vehicles.
After Rider, who lives in Habersham, presented the idea to experts, Robert Turner of the Habersham Land Company donated the building site, at cost, and a house was assembled which included Moser Design Group, Kathryn Lott Design and Patterson Builders.
The house sold for just under $800,000 – not to Rider – and part of the sale price was also donated to Parkinson’s disease. Southern Living magazine is planning an editorial feature in its August issue, which hits newsstands July 15.
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