Sam,
Might be worth chatting to Adam Thomas at Design Matters who are based
in high wycombe. He's very experienced in issues around kitchen designs
and is likely to have some good advice. Tel 01628 531584
[log in to unmask]
Henry Knight
Paker Knight Associates
-----Original Message-----
From: Accessibuilt list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Samuel Chapman
Sent: 28 October 2005 01:34
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [ACCESSIBUILT] Introduction & Adaptive kitchen design.
My name is Sam chapman and I live in the Reading area. My interests are
broad, though at present they revolve around the development of what I
would call 'Adaptive' kitchen unit system which would enable private,
public and Housing Associations to install units which can be readily
converted from 'conventional' to wheelchair accessible units and
'switched' back and forth depending on the circumstances of the person
using them. I have indeed now developed and built such a design, using
commercially available kitchen units which have been reworked to allow
them to do just this. My concern is that many landlords are rather
worried that if the DDA extends it's powers to encomapass all properties
which are rented out or a tenant becomes disabled and conversions in the
kitchen are required, they are possibly going to incur expenses which
they are not likely to recoup. Take the following example:
A landlord takes in a tenant who uses a wheelchair, or an existing
tenant becomes a wheelchair-user either due to injury, age-related
infirmity or contracting a disabling condition such as MS etc. Having
converted this kitchen over, when that tenant leaves, the Landlord has 2
options; Incur the cost of converting these kitchen units back into
their original 'conventional' configuration, or from that point, decide
to provide accomodation for wheelchair-using tenants. Since
wheelchair-using tenants make up a small percentage of the market of
those who are seeking a property, the Landlord may have to wait a
considerable anount of time before gaining another tenant, which does
not make it a very economic proposition.
What I have designed and built, are a range of kitchen units which can
be converted between one type of user and the other, at a very
reasonable increase on the price of buying in conventional kitchen
units. Once installed, conversion is a fairly straightforward proceedure
which [if built and installed in the way I have devised.] does not
require a lot of time or expense to reconfigure.
I have already contacted a number of kitchen unit manufacturers but they
generally say that this is a specalist section of the market and that
they are not interested in entering it, even though the production
methods required, make very few changes to their existing production
methods and that these 'Adaptive' units, would probably only increase
the retail cost of their existing units by 10 or at worst, 15%.
Admittedly the design does NOT cater for all the various types of
disability but I would say that it probably could accomodate around 80+%
of them as i have developed the system so far, and their use would in my
opinion, in the long term, offer considerable savings to whoever
employed them.
So, is anyone interested, or know a company or organisation like a HA
which might be interested in using these in some of their properties?
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Run by SURFACE for more information on research, consultancy and the
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Run by SURFACE for more information on research, consultancy and the distance taught MSc. in Accessibility and Inclusive Design programme visit:
http://www.inclusive-design.it
Archives for the Accessibuilt discussion list are located at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/accessibuilt.html
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