Emory Baldwin, Owner, Architect“We believe the finished house is a good example of an urban solution for an ‘aging-in-place’ home. Our family uses all of the spaces well, and as they were intended. Some of the things that we like particularly best about the house are features that may seem intended for a person with a disability, but that make our lives easier as well. For instance, the gently sloping path to our front door (and the low threshold there) make it easy to push our children’s strollers inside, and also makes it easier for my wife’s grandparents to visit. The stacking closets are currently used as extra deep storage, and work well for stowing strollers without needing to collapse them. The upper level of the stacking closets is used as a “reading nook” for bedtime stories, and has been designed to be semi-open until the elevator is needed in the future.” Emory Baldwin
Emory Baldwin is an architect specializing in “aging-in-place” residences. He graduated with a master’s in architecture degree from the University of Washington in 1997, where he wrote his master’s thesis on “Housing in Response to the Human Life Cycle.” Since then, he has been designing a range of residential projects, primarily senior housing and multi-family mixed-use developments. Emory and two of his colleagues have recently started their own architectural firm (ZAI Inc.), which focuses on universally designed residential environments that are flexible in plan so that they can accommodate the changing physiological and socio-economic changes that people are likely to experience over the course of their lives.
