Steve Hoffacker Is Your Design-Focused CAPS Instructor
Steve Hoffacker CAPS CEAC SHSS has a long association with designers – interior designers, kitchen and bath designers, structural engineers, architects, and architectural designers – and has had the pleasure of having many professionals with your background and experience attend and participate in the CAPS and Universal Design classes he has been teaching the past fourteen years.
The unique experience and viewpoint of the designer (collectively as a kitchen and bath designer, interior designer, building designer, architect, or specifier) enable you to understand how people use the areas in their home and especially their kitchen and bathroom space.
Of course, the way people generally navigate and use their home is quite important – moving about from room-to-room or space-to-space in the case of more open floor plans, using passageways and doorways, and taking into account the general considerations of lighting, flooring, furniture, cabinetry, fixtures, controls and switches, and other elements that comprise a person’s living space.
Designers, across all price points, architectural styles, ages of homes, and geographic locations, are well-versed in analyzing what they see when they arrive at a home and open the front door (in-person or by looking at a floor plan or rendering) and suggesting modifications to enhance the lifestyle, mobility, accessibility, navigation, comfort, convenience, and overall safety of their clients.
Whether the home is newly constructed, a few years old, built within the last couple of decades, a mid-century home, or one built much earlier (in the 1800s or before), there likely are issues with how the home is designed and equipped for the needs of the occupants and those who visit that home on an occasional basis. Of course, any home becomes more challenging as people age.
This is where the CAPS perspective and training becomes important
Many professional specialties may have a say in how to define a living space well so that it accommodates the lifestyle needs of the occupants to keep it relatively safe and easy for them to use it. Certainly, OTs, PTs, and other health care professionals are well-versed in addressing this, but so are designers.
By looking at and commenting on spatial relationship within a room and between rooms – open or closed floor plans, lighting, colors, flooring, and furnishings, a designer can impact how well the client can live in their home long-term through their observations and recommendations.
Come join our group of Certified Aging In Place Specialists to gain a little greater insight into how people use their home as they age, some of the sensory and mobility changes that occur, and to have a more significant impact in the lives of your clients. Learn to connect and interact with related professionals as well to create a more synergistic solution for your clients and the marketplace in general.
Steve Hoffacker is a member of NKBA (with the Living In Place, Lighting, Floor Plans & Specifications, and Sales & Marketing badges) and an Approved CE Provider. Find a class that Steve is teaching to work with someone who is a part of your profession.
