Scaling home designs for healthy cognitive ageing: a realist evaluation perspective
The University of Stirling is pleased to share a new open-access article. Developed through the DesHCA research project (Designing homes for healthy cognitive ageing), the paper presents an empirically grounded theory of change for scaling cognitively supportive home design.
A few highlights from the study:
• Small, low-cost design features (lighting, contrast, storage, switch/socket placement) are already implementable within existing standards.
• Flexibility in layouts remains essential as needs evolve.
• Professionals need structured ways of engaging with older people to support adoption.
• Scaling requires shifts in practice, procurement, policy, and awareness.
These challenges - how we move from isolated “good practice” to system-wide adoption - have parallels in industry wide efforts to move towards sustainable construction and net-zero. In fact this was a central theme of the BE-ST Fest event last November. The paper speaks to this challenge but from a different angle of social sustainability: how to scale home design that supports healthy cognitive ageing, across both new-build and retrofit contexts.
The paper was authored by Prof Alison Bowes, Dr Sadhana Jagannath, Dr Mary Njoki, Dr Catherine Pemble, Dr Martin Quirke, Dr Lisa Davison and Dr Alison Dawson.
Read the full paper here.
Bowes, A., Jagannath, S., Njoki, M., Pemble, C., Quirke, M., Davison, L., & Dawson, A. (2025). Scaling home designs for healthy cognitive ageing: a realist evaluation perspective. Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 12, 102186.
If you’re interested in housing design for ageing, cognitive health, retrofit, or implementation, we'd welcome thoughts or discussion.
