Ann Heylighen

Research Professor, University of Leuven•Belgium•http://www2.asro.kuleuven.be/home/heylighen/

This user account status is Approved

Areas of interest: Built Environment Research

Ann Heylighen is Research Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Leuven, Belgium (KU Leuven). She leads Research[x]Design, an interdisciplinary team of architects/designers, industrial engineers, sociologists/anthropologists and historians. Their work focuses on embedding the spatial experience of people of various abilities, ages and perspectives in the architectural design process. They are currently studying what architects can learn from people with dementia about how the material environment may act in comforting people. Ann studied Architecture at KU Leuven and ETH Zürich and obtained her MSc in Engineering: Architecture in 1996. Her PhD (2000) resulted in the development of the DYNAMO (Dynamic Architectural Memory On-line) resource for students and practitioners. She has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at KU Leuven, Harvard and Berkeley, and became a Research Professor in 2006. Ann has received two significant awards from the European Research Council (ERC): a Starting Independent Researcher Grant (2007) for the project Architectural design In Dialogue with dis-Ability (AIDA); and a Proof-of-Concept Grant (2012) for Rent-a-Spatialist, a project to bring the AIDA results to market.

Home in later life

With the growing number of older people, architects face the challenge of designing appropriate residential environments for current and future generations of older people. Too often they live in houses that are not adjusted to their needs and desires, with few spatial and social qualities of a real home. Amongst architects and professional care givers awareness grows of the importance of 'feeling at home' in residential and care environments, rather than just meeting basic needs like food, shelter and medical care. Van Steenwinkel, I., Baumers, S., Heylighen, A. (2012). Home in later life: A framework for the architecture of home environments. Home Cultures, 9 (2), 195-217.

Spatial Clues for Orientation

The physical environment holds great potential to improve the well-being of people with dementia when designed appropriately. However, when designing environments for them, architects are faced with a lack of adequate design knowledge. Van Steenwinkel, I., Van Audenhove, C., Heylighen, A. (2012). Spatial Clues for Orientation: Architectural Design Meets People with Dementia. In: Langdon P., Clarkson P., Robinson P., Lazar J., Heylighen A. (Eds.), Designing Inclusive Systems, Chapt.23. London: Springer-Verlag, 227-236.

In Search of a Future for Large-Scale Care Homes in Flanders

In Flanders housing for people moving into old age is evolving towards small-scale facilities and better quality of life, yet the ageing of the population strains the means to achieve this to the limit. In this article, we investigate whether and how Flemish large-scale facilities, despite their negative image, can adapt to meet contemporary and future requirements in care for older people. Coomans, K., De Smet, H., Heylighen, A. (2011). In Search of a Future for Large-Scale Care Homes in Flanders. Journal of Housing for the Elderly, 25 (4), 329-351.

Enriching our understanding of architecture through disability experience

The relationship between the built environment and the human body is rarely considered explicitly in contemporary architecture. In case architects do take the body into account, they tend to derive mathematical proportions or functional dimensions from it, without explicit attention for the bodily experience of a building. Heylighen, A., Van Doren, C., Vermeersch, P. (2013). Enriching our understanding of architecture through disability experience. Open House International, 38 (1), 7-19.