Lekker Architects and Lanzavecchia + Wai’s Catalogue of DIY Hacks for Dementia-friendly Homes.

Singapore-based Lekker Architects and Lanzavecchia + Wai have teamed up with Lien Foundation to launch Hack Care, a catalogue of DIY hacks to create dementia-friendly homes. Unveiled in September during World Alzheimer’s Month, this highly innovative design project builds on design’s potential to improve lives.

Styled like an IKEA catalogue with online instruction manuals, the 240-page Hack Care presents a visual compendium of more than 50 hacks and tricks, essays and stories to make the home a friendlier place for those living with dementia – also helping caregivers cope with the daily challenges of caregiving. The book takes a can-do, DIY approach to inspire and encourage caregivers to come up with their own hacks that are suited to their homes and personal needs. The aim is to help keep their loved ones with dementia engaged, empowered and enabled to age in place for as long as possible.

Hack Care combines the design and research insights of Lekker Architects with the expertise of product and furniture designers from Lanzavecchia + Wai Design Studio. Professionals from Alzheimer’s Disease Association (ADA), Brahm Centre and Khoo Teck Puat Hospital shared their collective wisdom on the caregiving journey.

When Lekker Architects’ Director, Ms Ong Ker-Shing was asked by Lien Foundation to collaborate on this design project, she jumped at the chance right away. Her father’s fight with dementia since 2009 and her own journey as a caregiver had impacted her deeply. She said, “At home, we observed how my father—through his decline into dementia—was incredibly responsive to changes in his environment, and more importantly, that the manipulation of this environment was really in the hands of us, his family, and not so much in the hands of architects and designers.” She realised that many caregivers like herself were constantly hacking, either through ideas of their own or in consultation with others.

Although it is modelled after the IKEA catalogue for its familiarity and universal appeal, Hack Care is not confined to IKEA products. Instead, it presents a whole range of possibilities for caregivers that correspond to their different scales of ambition and the wide-ranging needs of persons with dementia – from larger-scale hacks like improvising the IKEA Poang chair to simple ones like camouflaging an exit door in a colour similar to its adjacent walls.

In addition, Hack Care shows how the “micro-worlds” or spaces in the homes for spending the day and mealtimes can be enhanced, and daily rituals like bathing and dressing can become opportunities to shape the living environment to improve the wellbeing of the person with dementia.

To download a copy of Hack Care, visit hackcare.sg

[Images courtesy of Lien Foundation.]