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This Bold House
By Belinda Luscombe, September-October 2003
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While patiently explaining it all, Pirkl stops to admire the unobstructed views of the scrubby, windswept Sandia Mountains visible from several rooms. It's appropriate that he and his wife, Sarah, should have built their house here among the rocky mesas, where the wildflowers are beautiful but extremely hardy. It's not exactly hostile terrain, but it's not prodigally hospitable either. This is the kind of landscape Jim has been working in all his life, sowing the seeds of transgenerational design, working to get designers and builders to think about those who don't have the full range of strength and motion.
Pirkl has received little encouragement over the years. People aren't hostile to his ideas—why would they be when the potential client base of 50-plus Americans is 75 million and growing? And a few designers have done well with Pirkl's philosophy. His former students Davin Stowell and Tom Dair have snagged a bunch of awards with their OXO Good Grips utensils, and Rem Koolhaas, the visionary of the current architectural moment, built a glamorous house in France for an editor in a wheelchair. As a design problem, physical challenges aren't setting the creative world afire. Often, it's quite the opposite: "When I was putting together a resource book for transgenerational design," says Pirkl, "there were several companies that didn't want to be in it because they didn't want to be associated with old people."
But universal design is not about the occupant's age, it's about the building's usefulness. Pirkl says that because most younger designers have never had to face much in the way of disability, this aspect often gets overlooked. And design competitions don't make it any easier. "Students are influenced by glitz and glamour rather than functionality and the fundamental humanity of the product," he says.
Jim Pirkl doesn't want universal design to be glamorous or famous or a capital-M Movement. He wants it to be a reflex among architects, designers, and builders. Just as builders now automatically make counters 36 inches high and electrical outlets 12 inches from the floor, he wants them to think of 32-inch countertops (a suitable height for wheelchair users) and outlets 18 inches from the floor (which make for much less stooping and squatting). He wants them to consider toilets mounted to the wall instead of the floor, making the floor easier to clean. He wants them to create spaces in the house that provide a five-foot-diameter circle for a wheelchair to turn around in. Instead of specifying knobs for drawers, designers could opt for D-shaped drawer pulls, which are much easier to grasp—for everyone.
Pirkl has been preaching this stuff for many of his 72 years, at Syracuse University, where he was a professor, and at international symposia. Pirkl was in one of the first academic groups to visit the Soviet Union in 1976 to give seminars on industrial design practices. He has organized student competitions and set up courses to certify contractors in transgenerational building. "We still have a long way to go," says Pirkl. Manufacturers aren't aware that the market for easy-to-use products is out there, and the public isn't aware of the few products that are.
Pirkl started his career at General Motors, where he designed World's Fair exhibits and experimental appliances. "I was on the bonus list, and I had a new Corvette every year, but I still wasn't happy," he says. Then his mother had a stroke, and he took a job at Syracuse University, partly to be close to her. She died shortly after his return, but seeing her struggles started him thinking about kinder, more flexible home design. Eventually, he began teaching these concepts to his students.
Pirkl wrote two books on the subject, one with Anna Babic, his colleague from the Syracuse gerontology department. Now that he's retired, he's taken on the most labor-intensive research project of all: the house.
Sarah, his wife of 29 years, is partly to blame for that. They'd found a sweet house in her home state of New Mexico, but it wasn't working out. Sarah, who was diagnosed with congenital scoliosis when she was nine, has been not just a supporter of Pirkl's work but his market researcher. "She said, 'Why don't you put our money where your mouth is and build a house with all your ideas in it,' " remembers Pirkl.
The temptation to make this house a Statement about disability access must have been overwhelming, but the Pirkls chose another route: subtlety. Jim knew that in order for the house to be truly universal, it had to feel comfortable to people of all physical abilities. Clunky, space-eating ramps, for example, are not really universal, because given the choice, the ambulatory would not want them in their homes. So his accommodations are invisible. Many of us would not notice the "redundant cuing" in the kitchen, for example: Whenever the oven timer rings, an alert light also flashes. An oven with a counterbalanced hinged door and the multiple-height kitchen countertops are actually choices that make life more comfortable and convenient for any homeowner, no matter how spry. The operating panel on the Wolf stove is concealed until a button is pressed, making it safer for families with button-mad toddlers. Says Jim: "We're hoping the general public will see this house and lobby companies and building organizations so that they too can have the same level of convenience and features."
None of this interferes with the house's aesthetics. The whole place is vibrant and fresh and radiates a native intelligence. It's a further testament to Jim Pirkl's talent that the house feels so breezy and effortless, because every part of creating it has been a struggle. They had to fire their first architect, dealing the project a six-month setback. And although many of their suppliers supported the effort with handsome discounts, the Pirkls had to manage their resources carefully to pay for construction. The total cost was more than $300,000. There were times when Sarah worried that her husband was taking on too much. "Thank God Jim learned how to build while in the Seabees during the Korean War," she says. "Once, when the framing was three quarters of an inch off, he rebuilt a wall himself."
Now, finally, the Pirkls' dream has a roof and radiant floor heating and is fiber-optic-cable ready, should fiber optics ever reach Placitas. Jim is content to have proved that a transgenerational house can be built not too expensively (he estimates it at $120 per square foot) and with the knowledge that the next one will be easier. Perhaps his dream is not so quixotic after all. He even had a little victory with the builder, who, when he came to check the furnace, saw the aforementioned large-digit thermostats, which Jim had installed himself. The contractor was a little taken aback. "I've been looking everywhere for something like this," he said. "Where did you get them?"
Ah, another convert.
Belinda Luscombe is a senior editor at Time magazine. She is married with two children and lives in an only moderately transgenerational loft in New York City.
Now, check out AARP.org's room-by-room guide to applying universal design to your own home.
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