James Joseph Pirkl, you are Executive Director of Transgenerational Design Matters. Could you present your organization?
Transgenerational Design Matters is a non-profit research and education organization that helps companies, businesses and organizations design and promote products and environments that attract the attention, confidence and loyalty of 50-million Baby Boomers, their children, and their aging parents.
We do this by:
- Dispelling popular myths and stereotypes of age and aging,
- Expanding perceptions of the senior market, its expectations, and design requirements,
- Offering transgenerational design education and training through lectures, workshops and seminars,
- Developing and providing design guidelines and strategies that address age-related changes in vision, hearing, touch, taste and movement,
- Evaluating existing product and environmental designs for their transgenerational effectiveness and attractiveness.
- Generating new transgenerational design concepts that serve the needs and expectations of the swelling senior market, and
- Developing and conducting award programs that encourage and reward transgenerational design excellence.
What is the mission of Transgenerational Design Matters?
As a non-profit organization, our mission is to improve the quality of life for people of all ages and abilities by advocating a ‘transgenerational’ approach to the design of products and environments. We accomplish our mission through research, education, and publication – developing specialized training, workshops and evaluation programs for corporations, businesses, public and private organizations, and academic groups.
You have been called “the father of Transgenerational Design.” Could you describe what “transgenerational design” is?
Transgenerational design is the practice of making products and environments compatible with those physical and sensory impairments associated with human aging and which limit major activities of daily living.
It advances the frontier of accessibility beyond the conventional boundaries of disability to include those physical or sensory impairments that frequently occur during our later years, such as arthritis, declining eyesight, poor hearing, diabetes and stroke.
Young people and seniors are different in many aspects, how do you develop designs that accommodate – and appeal to – all generations?
Transgenerational design is not about building specialized “elderly” housing or “adaptive” products like quad canes, walkers and toilet seat lifters. It is about designing residential environments and household products that accommodate the widest market segments that would use them – the young, the old, the able, the disabled – without penalty to any group.
It does so by developing human-sensitive architecture, appliances, fixtures, products, transportation, and communication designed for safety, comfort, accessibility, clean-ability, adjust-ability, ease of use, and bodily fit – ‘transgenerational’ features that neutralize the aging process.
Shouldn’t a kitchen, bath, laundry – or even a potato peeler – be as readily used by a child with a sprained ankle, a teenager with a broken arm, a Baby Boomer with heart disease, an octogenarian with arthritic hands, or a pregnant twenty-something housewife?
Who are your clients?
Over the past two decades, we have delivered invited lectures on transgenerational design at the Royal College of Art (London), the National College of Art and Design (Dublin), the Netherlands Design Institute (Amsterdam), the Ozone Design Center (Japan), the Institute for Gerontechnology (Eindhoven), the China Industrial Design Association (Taiwan), and the National College of Art and Design (Helsinki),
We have also conducted transgenerational design seminars, workshops and programs for such organizations as Age Wave, Inc., the Arthritis Foundation, Asahikasei Homes Co. (Japan), The Boeing Company, Design Age (London), Ford Motor Design Center, General Electric Appliances, Johnson & Johnson, McNeil Consumer Products, and the National Association of Home Builders.
Would you like to speak about one of your recent projects?
We recently completed our Transgenerational House project – the design and construction of a cutting-edge ‘transgenerational’ house designed for Baby Boomers, their children, and their aging parents. The project, supported by the AARP and featured in the September-October 2003 issue of AARP The Magazine, was exposed to over 30-million 50+ readers.
The force behind the Transgenerational House is the profound demographic changes taking place in the United States and throughout the world. The growing strength of the swelling senior market provides compelling evidence that a world-wide demand for aging-sensitive housing and household products will soon erupt.
Based on the premise that accessible ‘universal’ housing, kitchens, bathrooms and products need not look ‘institutional’ nor imply ‘aging,’ our one-level design is upbeat and contemporary – attractive to young as well as older residents. Its major areas open onto an accessible central courtyard ‘oasis,’ providing indoor and outdoor living for all.
The Transgenerational House showcases a wide range of off-the-shelf, cutting-edge architectural components, appliances, products and fixtures. All are designed to accommodate the widest spectrum of ages and abilities – the essence of ‘transgenerational design,’ a term I coined almost two decades ago.
About James Joseph Pirkl
James Joseph Pirkl, FIDSA is professor emeritus of industrial design and past chairman of Syracuse University’s department of design. A former senior research fellow at Syracuse's All-University Gerontology Center, he co-authored the pioneering book, Guidelines and Strategies for Developing Transgenerational Products (Copley, 1988). His second book, Transgenerational Design: Products for an Aging Population (Wiley, 1994), is cited in references world-wide.
For further information, contact:
James Joseph Pirkl
Executive Director
Transgenerational Design Matters
3 Cloud View
Placitas, NM 87043 USA
Phone: 505.867.6541
Fax: 505.867.9571
E-Mail: jjp@transgenerational.org
Web: http://www.transgenerational.org
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