Ziyue Tao 

According to the World Health Organization, dementia is now the fifth largest killer in the world, although dementia is the number one killer in some wealthier countries. The 2020 dementia study on Chinese people over 60 years old shows that there are approximately 15.07 million people with dementia among Chinese people aged 60 and over. Among the elderly over 85 years old, 1/3 suffer from dementia. The study found that 9 kinds of changeable risk factors, including living environment, education level, marital status, smoking, high blood pressure, hyperlipidaemia, diabetes, heart disease, cerebrovascular disease. If these risk factors can be controlled, the incidence of dementia will be greatly reduced, along with the overall prevalence of dementia and its associated mild cognitive impairment. Nursing home facilities in China are generally outdated. Although most nursing homes accept the elderly with dementia, few of them have set up spaces and treatments specially for patients with dementia, and some nursing homes even combine the elderly with dementia and the elderly who can not take care of themselves for nursing care. Although some nursing homes in big cities offer spaces for people with dementia, the price is too high for most people to afford it. In this case, creating a collective space for people with dementia where they can slow down the stage of the disease and do some social activities is an urgent problem. Therefore, my research question is how to design the interior spaces of nursing homes for patients with dementia in China.  

Names of Supervisors: Chris Lim, Penny Lewis, Maggie Ellis