It’s really a lovely concept. I’m not going to drone about the six or seven principles of Universal Design – what is it with our species, that we seem to so like lists and acronyms? I’m going to try to present the idea effectively.

My father used to tell me: if you don’t have time to do the job right at first, where are you going to get the time to do it over? That’s what UD is about: enough forethought that you don’t have to redo.

So:

You stack the closets in case you ever need an elevator.

You try to make any staircase straight in case you ever need a chair lift.

You install extra bracing in the sleep and bath areas, in case you ever need a Hoyer lift.

You consider bringing the plumbing up to the roof for future solar, or the wiring to a closet for future laundry.

You make all doorways wide enough.

You probably build the kitchen into a corner, so it’s always approachable.

Here’s what UD is not about: door levers instead of knobs. That’s about accessibility. In fact, knobs may be the right choice in a home if you want to keep toddlers or pets from opening the doors. It’s easy to change knobs for levers or levers for knobs.

And it’s not necessarily about multi-use ideas, or convertibility. If every room can be used for every purpose you’re back in feudal design. And the truth about human nature is we don’t want to go through the conversion steps and we no longer have servants to do it for us, so no thanks to the tub that requires you remove the shower floor, or the dining table that in six easy steps converts to your desk.

UD gets you thinking. You soon view a staircase as a bad compromise between horizontal and vertical: a urinal, a chimney, a black marketplace. Sure a stairway can be designed to be grand, but so can a ramp. And a ramp will move strollers and wheelchairs and gurneys. A ramp won’t produce falls.

I’ll say some more about UD, and I’ll attempt to present my three basic building ideas in a few interesting words. For now, I’ll try this:

I dare you to be playful – that is my
insistent challenge to the architects.
I’m lately viewing sculptures in the sky
and dreaming them erect on land. The specs
are arcs and angles – the geometry
of ramping is a puzzle in tight space –
but I adapt the barriers to be
the terms of entertainment for the place.

A ramp’s a slide and scaffolding are bars.
A fence is both protection and a ledge.
I dream of us at play, above the cars,
without the frenzy, musing on the edge
of rules: in homes a spider might have spun,
if spiders thought like builders having fun.