Homes4Life: Transitioning from conceptual to piloting a certification scheme for age-friendly homes

Our homes have a tremendous impact on our health and wellbeing. Ensuring their suitability and adaptability to people’s needs and preferences is one of the most effective approaches to respond to challenges brought to us by Europe’s ageing demographics. A huge share of the building stock, however, is not adapted for ageing at home.

Homes4Life is run by a multidisciplinary group of nine partners from five EU countries representing researchers, architects, older persons, informal carers and certification experts. The Homes4Life certification aims to offer a holistic life-course approach to housing, which needs to be affordable, accessible and adaptable. A video about H4L vision is available here.

Major societal trends such as ageing demographics; changing models of care; social innovation and employment; digital trends; climate change and other environmental issues, can all be addressed by housing. Our homes are interconnected and integrated and affect our lives, beyond the domain of purely physical and accessibility issues. The Homes4Life model has therefore endeavoured to include aspects related to our personal, social and economic needs and preferences which can be translated into functional requirements that can be included in the Homes4Life certification scheme.

If you are interested and would like to contribute or provide your feedback, please do so by joining the H4L Community of Interest here.

If you are interested to learn more about the conceptual work underpinning the H4L model, you can view a recent project presentation presented by TNO, one of the H4L project partners at Health City Design 2019.