Characteristics of experience pavilion for aging-friendly house planning in Japan

Korean society is aging at the fastest speed in the world and is set to become world's most aged society after 2040. Along with population aging, another issue that has recently received more attention is the health of the elderly. The elderly end up spending most of their days at home due to declining capacity from aging, and the development of housing which takes into consideration the health of the elderly is urgently needed. This paper aims to mitigate the effects of the aging society crisis and examine how housing must be prepared to function as a welfare infrastructure that enables the elderly to be more self-reliant. Accordingly, this paper will systematically analyze the successful case study of Japan's Experience Pavilion, which was built to enable visitors to experience a residential environment that allows the elderly to live independently and in health in a society that began experiencing aging earlier than Korea, analyzing the cases according to the types of impairment that can occur among the elderly, such as musculoskeletal, sensorimotor, and mental handicaps. The subjects of this paper's research are the Barrier-Free Smai Hall in the Shinagawa district of Tokyo, and the Health & Welfare Experience Pavilion inside the Shizuoka region's health and welfare center. The two locations were examined for case study through actual visitation to the sites. As a result, various factors were classified into spatial planning factors and product items that were installed within that space. The majority of those factors dealt with spatial planning factors and product applications that support musculoskeletal handicaps. In this paper, discussions were carried out on the various aspects of how to ease the handicaps that the elderly experience through aging. The results will be useful as a specific design guide for planning residences that can increase the habitability of the elderly.