Measuring the spatial quality of bedrooms in nursing homes with visual environmental performance

Abstract

The elderly’s perception of their environment largely depends on acquired visual information. This study provides a quantitative analytical method for designing bedrooms in nursing homes by developing a computational model that uses viewing distance, viewing angle, and viewing field as variables. The model is utilized to measure a range of visual environmental properties, including privacy, accessibility, permeability, and visibility, which reflect the quality of bedrooms in nursing homes. The suitability levels of bedroom planes for the elderly and their main living functions as well as the fitting degree of the functional layout are calculated based on these data. After validating the computational model’s feasibility, this study optimizes the typical schemes of single and double rooms in nursing homes. Results reveal certain advantages of the arrangement where bathroom doors are set toward the inside of the bedroom and double rooms have a large width. The computational model can be used in measuring the spatial quality of bedrooms in nursing homes and as a mathematical model for related algorithm design and software programming to assist in the design and optimization of bedrooms for the elderly.

Key words： Nursing home; Elderly bedroom; Spatial quality; Visual environment; Computational model; Performance parameters