Housing and housing environment design guide recommendation in accordance with universal design principles: An evaluation on gated communities

With the changes in lifestyles and life patterns in the society, the concept of the average person and the typical family home is gradually losing its meaning. The needs in housing are changing due to changes in family, lifestyle, or health conditions. The house and its environment, which are designed in accordance with universal design principles, take into account the basic design features that benefit the quality of life of individuals even at the designing phase, and keep up with the changes that individuals undergo during their lifetime by adapting to them. Designing the new houses to be built in accordance with the universal design principles helps to reduce and prevent the costs of the later improvements in the housing spaces and housing elements. Within the scope of the study, a guideline proposal was created for the design of housing and residential environments in accordance with universal design principles. Firstly, in the study, gated communities were chosen as the type of housing for the evaluation of housing and housing environments. As the field study, Altınkale Neighborhood, where gated housing settlements are densely built lately in Antalya City, has been chosen. A spatial classification has been made starting from the periphery of the house to the small units of the house. Gated communities are examined under three main headings as common areas, semi-private areas, and private areas. International and national universal design and accessibility standards were examined, and the most appropriate standards were determined. Firstly, evaluation tables were created according to the standards table to determine the compliance of the houses with the universal design principles. Also, in order to enable people to evaluate the houses they live in according to universal design principles; they were asked to evaluate the houses on a five-point Likert scale. In the thesis study, data were collected by carrying out two separate field studies; evaluating the housing and housing environments according to the selected standards and the surveys made to the housing users. According to the universal design principles, the positive and negative features of the existing houses are presented. It has been determined that there are deficiencies in the main entrances, pedestrian paths, vertical circulation elements (stairs, elevators, ramps), parking lots, kitchens, and bathrooms of the gated communities. With the data obtained from the field studies, design proposals were created for the new housing and residential environments to be built. Keywords: Housing, Housing Design, Housing Environment, Gated Communities, Universal Design, Universal Design Principles