Archinect - News

'Lego Grandma' constructs wheelchair ramps out of Lego

2020-02-24T16:45:00-05:00

Ms. [Rita] Ebel, who has been in a wheelchair herself since a car accident 25 years ago, said the idea was born after a friend of hers, who is also in a wheelchair, said she could not get out of a shop with steps and had to enlist the help of four people to carry her chair down. Ms Ebel then saw a picture in a medical journal for paraplegics, of a woman in an electric wheelchair going over a Lego ramp.

Earning the nickname 'Lego Grandma,' Rita and her husband work together on the ramps, often spending two to three hours a day building them, reports RTE News. While wood or aluminum ramps would provide a proper solution, Rita says that the bright Lego "makes her message stand out and highlights the day-to-day problems faced by people with disabilities." These playful bricks have become a form of advocacy.

"For me it is just about trying to sensitive the world a little bit to barrier-free travel, I mean it could happen to anyone that they suddenly end up in a situation that puts them in a wheelchair, like it did [to] me," Rita expressed, according to RTE News.

Study Links Walkable Neighborhoods to Prevention of Cognitive Decline

2014-12-16T13:33:00-05:00

In a study presented last weekend to the Gerontological Society of America, University of Kansas assistant professor Amber Watts examined 26 subjects with mild Alzheimer’s Disease and 30 healthy control subjects. She tracked health outcomes over two years, controlling for home price, income, gender, and education. [...] "Our findings suggest that people with neighborhoods that require more mental complexity actually experience less decline in their mental functioning over time.”

Gordon Walker designs a house for the future

2011-10-10T15:14:25-04:00

Walker showed his idea around. The response was near freezing. "So far, people don't like them," he says. "They say, 'I want something I recognize.' "The baby boomers are coming of age, and I always imagined that they were more design-minded than they turned out to be." Or they just haven't caught up to Gordon Walker.

A Seattle architect designs a house for him and his wife to grow old in, and realizes he's way more cool than most other senior citizens.