Design to raise living standards

The idea follows research carried out by Healthhabitat, a company set up to improve the living standards of Indigenous Australians, which found that living conditions in many Indigenous Australian households were unacceptable.

Over seven years, researchers visited more than 4600 Indigenous Australian households across urban and regional Australia looking for ways to improve people's living conditions.

They found that only 33 per cent of houses they visited had a working shower, 26 per cent had laundry facilities and 56 per cent had a working toilet.

"More important than food, three key areas to our health are the ability to wash once a day, to be able to wash our clothes, and to be able to remove waste safely from our immediate living environment," said Professor Pholeros, who is also a director of Healthhabitat.

"The people aren't the problem, it's the design and maintenance of the equipment that needs to be improved to allow us to achieve these apparently simple health goals," "This is what a wash room should look like," said Mr James as the prototype was launched.

Details of the room's design arose from extensive research and workshops with health professionals, architects and Aboriginal leaders, with special attention given to disabled access. The room features a combined toilet and hobless shower, a medicine cabinet, a ceramic tub and bench with access from the inside and the outside, a wheelchair and a laundry trolley, and a combined washing and drying machine.

'The sort of thinking that went into this wash room is needed nationally.'

"Aboriginal people experience disability at an earlier rate than non-Aboriginal people because of endemic poor health. We don't want architectural disablement," said Dr Catherine Bridge, senior lecturer in the Discipline of Occupational Therapy, and a consultant in the design process.

"Anything we can do to improve resources is fundamental to people's quality of life and to the community," she said.

"The sort of thinking that went into this wash room is needed nationally," added Professor Pholeros.

The wash room includes an `eco-meter' which measures the water, electricity and gas output, and translates that use into a monetary amount and carbon dioxide outputs. Hugh Snelgrove, a third year architecture student, and Gabriel Ulacco, an architecture graduate, spent six weeks sourcing materials, including the eco-meter, and building the prototype. "Col gave us a 5cm by 5cm thumbnail sketch. Gabriel brought it to scale by generating a computerised visualisation, after which we could assess what we needed," explained Hugh.

The home clinic and wash room will be on display in Alexandria until 5 April.

For more information and photos: http://www.usyd.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=1667