Interview
Lisa Bonneville, Interior Designer
Fellow of the American Society of Interior Designers, former chair of the Board of Trustees at the Boston Architectural College and member of the New England Design Hall of Fame, Lisa Bonneville is also author of The Safe Home, published in 2007 by the ASID. In this latter capacity she agreed to share some insights about the changing role of design.

Kyle Hoepner: Safety isn’t a topic that comes up very often in interior design magazines. Can you give us a pocket overview of what families who plan to build or remodel should be thinking about?
Lisa Bonneville: In my analysis it really comes down to three things: health, injury and security. Health and injury issues are primarily addressed through what is in place structurally in a house—looking at mechanical issues and the way it’s built and then providing a space that best suits the client. Walls or structural components may need to be altered in order to create the floorplan that’s most convenient. Or, if I interview a client and they have specific allergies, it’s my responsibility to take a look at their heating system and make sure that forced air is properly filtered. A client’s home is their most prized, most protected environment, so it should enhance their health as much as possible and it certainly should not be a detriment to it. It also should be easy to navigate, be completely comfortable in its furnishings and be efficient in the fixtures and appliances that are put in place.
Security is the third factor important to a safe home. Security is a very relative thing; it really depends on the life someone has lived, what their experiences have been. You may have clients who never lock their home and clients who have three different alarm systems, so establishing their comfort level is extremely important.
A new generation of architects and interior designers are creating living spaces that are “people centered” and focus on the needs, desires and abilities of all inhabitants of a home, their visitors, family and friends.

KH: Would you approach a primary residence differently from a vacation home, in that the expected use and range of inhabitants will be different?
LB: There are questions to ask there: is the vacation home going to become a retirement home down the road? Who is it used by most of the time? Who else will sometimes use it, what are their needs when they come in? A lot of my clients have had second homes built in northern New England or in Florida, and their idea is that they’re going to use them as vacation homes now and later they’re going to retire there. That would make all the issues the same as for a first home—maybe even more so because when they retire they’ll be older and their bodies will be able to do less. So, for instance, we’d prepare by blocking all the shower walls now for grab bars to be installed later. We’d have wider doorways with no thresholds, plenty of open space that’s easy to get around and has a lot of options for furniture, and a kitchen where a number of people can move around at the same time.

KH: Are there any aspects of safe home design that are specifically related to New England?
LB: I would say—and this is probably true of the Eastern seaboard generally, because the history of this country started here in the East—that we more often have homes that are very old and we cherish the integrity of that architecture. Typically in older houses the rooms are small, doorways are narrow and you’ll see thresholds coming up as much as an inch between rooms. Some people cling to the architecture and make do rather than make changes that might be more supportive of their needs.

KH: Given that we have so much older and in many cases highly usable and beautiful housing stock, that does presumably require a lot more retrofitting than other places might.
LB: But you know, I’ve lived in two very old houses here in New England and I remodeled both of them to an extent, and people haven’t walked in and said, “What have you done to this place?”
When the ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] was voted in as a law in 1990, it became standard that any building the general public is going to use has to be handicapped accessible and meet the other qualifications of the act. In a home, it’s the homeowner who gets to make most of the decisions about what their environment is going to be like, so it takes society in general to embrace the concept of making homes usable by the majority rather than by the few. This is the year when the oldest baby boomers begin to retire, so as the retired component of our society becomes more and more huge we’ll see extremely accelerated change taking place. It will be just as important for people to make their homes safe and accessible as it is to make them green today.

Click here to see Lisa Bonneville's Steps to Safe Home Design