Hasta La Ideas

Flexible kitchen design in the Wounded Warrior home. All images and video courtesy of IDEO

In less than a month, the last American troops stationed in Iraq are set to return home. As the United States prepares to celebrate the close of a painfully fraught era of politics and war, veterans and their families face the beginning of their next great challenge: returning home and acclimating to a peacetime “normalcy.” Oftentimes, United States’ military men and women carry the physical and emotional wounds of their service home with them, “find[ing] workarounds to cope with their surroundings based on individual capabilities and preferences.” Today, IDEO unveils a new model for building accessible homes on military installations: the Wounded Warrior home.

The Wounded Warrior project is a collaboration with the Virginia-based real estate firm Clark Realty Capital and supported by a Department of Defense initiative to develop privatized housing for service members. Using IDEO’s human-centered design process, the team interviewed and observed 10 civilians and 20 injured soldiers, “meeting with their loved ones, and getting feedback from nearly two dozen experts. [IDEO] asked questions that shed light on how active duty service members resume civilian life after debilitating injuries, what could make their experience more dignified and healthy, and what might reconnect them with family, close friends, and the world.” The team also immersed themselves in the recovery and therapy process for disabled veterans and consulted with dozens of medical experts and advocacy groups.

Through their process, IDEO’s team quickly realized that there was no one Wounded Warrior, but instead, their work would need to accommodate a wide range of interactions and needs of disabled service men and women. The team identified seven dualities from their research:

• Well-Defined, Undefined Spaces: A home is never set in stone. In a household, roles shift, preferences change and most important, physical and mental impairments dictate an evolving set of challenges. This demands a flexible design that allow for both defined and undefined space. People wish to be the architect of their own home. Open-ended space gives them square feet to imagine an optimism and future they shape themselves.
• Mobile Roots: It’s difficult to sink down roots when they’re yanked up every few years. The constant flux of transient military life places extra demands on a family. People don’t want to feel they’re just passing through, short timers, skipping from base to base. They want home to feel like they’ve finally arrived at their destination. The dynamic of mobility and deep roots often decides a big chunk of happiness.
• Inside Out, Outside In: Poets, explorers, and rehab therapists all know the immense healing powers of nature. It’s a tremendous gift for anyone suffering wounds, physical or mental. The outside world or even back patio is a deep-breath metaphor for freedom. Nature is force of nurture. This duality is about bringing the outside experience inside the home—and equally important, making sure the journey outside is short, effortless, and joyful.
• Visible & Invisible Security: Trauma, post combat stress, reduced mobility—these are issues that make it hard to feel safe and secure. People want the protection of their hidden cocoon but also a total 360 degree visual awareness of their surroundings. It’s about providing security through concealment and reduced exposure—yet also creating security through visibility, instant communication, and control of their environment.
• Social Privacy: Sometimes people view their home as a sanctuary, a retreat, a place of privacy and introspection. Other times, people see their home as a gateway to the outside world—to social and cultural connections that both determine well-being. A home must be a restful oasis and a place for raucous good times—both equally therapeutic.
• Uniquely Normal: Here are two distinct and contrary requirements: the desire to live a normal life despite significant physical and often mental wounds. Normal in the just like everybody-else sense. No special treatment whatsoever. But second, the obvious need for specific accommodations that dramatically improve quality of life. In the home, the goal is to strike that balance: a wheel chair-friendly dream home, but one that appears ordinary, nothing more than plain wonderful normal life.
• Old Self, New Self: Healing is a long and winding road. The early stages are about repairing the damage, rebuilding what was lost. Over time, the unique determination of Wounded Warriors drive them toward self-improvement and transformation. The human beauty is that great loss also inspires tremendous new gain. This calls for an architecture that encourages that recovery, no matter where or how far that journey takes them

Visible and Invisible Security in private nooks in a Uniquely Normal Living Room.

Today’s unveiling of the Wounded Warrior model home represents an innovative and flexible approach to addressing the needs of not only disabled military veterans, but a wide-ranging group of people facing physical disabilities. Clark Realty partnered with architect Michael Graves to build the first homes—Graves brought his personal insights to the project. Graves has suffered from lower-body paralysis that has confined him to a wheelchair for nearly a decade, and through this experience, he has gained significant expertise into how people live and work, whether mobility challenged or not. We’re excited to see which concepts Graves took from IDEO’s work and how the build will be realized today in Fort Belvoir.

Core77 had the opportunity to sit down with Altay Sendil, IDEO designer and project lead for the Wounded Warrior house to learn more about the process and learnings from this unique project:

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