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In 1964, the Provincial Committee for Home Culture of West-Flanders (Belgium) questioned the format of its competitions for the best arranged, furnished and maintained home. They were wondering if that formula was still up-to-date. Was it still pedagogically acceptable to judge people's homes, based on one snapshot of reality? Did they reach with that instrument the right people, namely the youngsters who want to buy or rent a house and create an own home? Was another formula not more appropriate? Those questions voice exactly the shift that was taking place during the last third of the twentieth century. It encompasses a transition from education to 'edu-tainment', a shift from rather traditional exhibitions on housing and home culture to a kind of show houses avant-la-lettre, a specialization from houses for the masses to houses for certain target groups, and a focus from a "good" home with all necessary domestic equipment to an ecologically sustainable home made from durable materials. By drawing on numerous sources of publications, catalogues, books, archival documents and websites produced by several governmental and socio-cultural organisations, this paper elucidates how a paradigm shift took place in home culture exhibitions in Flanders during the second half of the twentieth century. It demonstrates how home-related concepts, such as comfort, have shifted in meaning and how the relation with the public has altered. Eventually, the paper analyses some present-day initiatives in light of the twentieth century. For example, living labs are rooted in choices made during the 1970s and 1980s. Analysing current initiatives reveals again a shift in "exhibitions", as the content, the stakeholders and the role of the government as initiator of housing exhibitions has changed again. Based on these insights we conclude with some reflections on possible positive future evolutions as well as critical ideas about the impact of the shift in roles.

Energy Efficiency (EE) and Universal Design (UD) are topics high on governmental policy and research agendas which have been considered separately both in research and practice. This research hypothesizes that comfort can be a conceptual link that can represent both EE and UD features. In order to understand the broader meaning of comfort at home from the perspective of inhabitants in the context of home renovations, and to test our hypothesis, we conducted 3 qualitative studies with different user groups. The results confirm that users associate with comfort all aspects related to EE as well as with most aspects in UD. In addition, results indicate that EE can be an integral part of UD if both are considered from a comfort point of view. These are presented in a theoretical framework for comfort that can be used to further study a potential integration of the EE and UD fields.

Energy Efficiency (EE) and Universal Design (UD) are high on governmental policy and research agendas. However EE and UD are mainly considered separately both in research and practice and have reached only limited adoption in society. In essence, based on literature review, we can observe that the goals of governments and policymakers in regards to home renovations, i.e. increasing EE and UD adoption to solve certain societal challenges, are misaligned with those of people, who aim to increase their comfort. Thus, we hypothesize that comfort can be a unifying framework that can represent both EE and UD features, and therefore is able to contain the aspirations of inhabitants as well as policy makers. In this sense comfort must broaden its definition from the often used thermal comfort in EE research and the biomechanics focus in UD. In order to understand the broader meaning of comfort from the perspective of inhabitants in the context of home renovations, and to test our hypothesis, we conducted 3 qualitative studies with different groups: a workshop, interviews, and a small survey. The studies, in different formats, elicited the participants' meaning of comfort at home in their own words. They confirm that people associate with comfort all aspects related to EE such as temperature, air quality, light and noise, as well as with most aspects central to UD such as usability, accessibility, views to outdoors etc. In addition they revealed the insight that EE and UD aspects are not separate and unrelated but rather that EE, if considered from a comfort point of view, can be seen as a part of UD. These are presented in a new framework for Comfort that can be used to further study the merging of the EE and UD fields to achieve higher adoption rates for both.

Policy and societal objectives indicate a large need for housingrenovations that both accommodate lifelong living and significantly increaseenergy efficiency. However, these two areas of research are not yet examined inconjunction and this paper hypothesizes this as a missed opportunity to createbetter renovation concepts. The paper outlines a comparative review on research inEnergy Efficiency and Universal Design in order to find the similarities anddifferences in both depth and breadth of knowledge. Scientific literature in the twofields reveals a disparate depth of knowledge in areas of theory, research approach,and degree of implementation in society. Universal Design and Energy Efficiencyare part of a trajectory of expanding scope towards greater sustainability and,although social urgency has been a driver of the research intensity and approach inboth fields, in energy efficiency there is an engineering, problem solving approachwhile Universal Design has a more sociological, user-focused one. These differentapproaches are reflected in the way home owners in Energy Efficiency researchare viewed as consumers and decision makers whose drivers are studied, whileUniversal Design treats home owners as informants in the design process andstudies their needs. There is an inherent difficulty in directly merging UniversalDesign and Energy Efficiency at a conceptual level because Energy Efficiency isunderstood as a set of measures, i.e. a product, while Universal Design is part of a(design) process. The conceptual difference is apparent in their implementation aswell. Internationally energy efficiency in housing has been largely imposedthrough legislation, while legislation directly mandating Universal Design is eithernon-existent or it has an explicit focus on accessibility. However, EnergyEfficiency and Universal Design can be complementary concepts and, even thoughit is more complex than expected, the combination offers possibilities to advanceknowledge in both fields.

Global problems such as depletion of natural resources and local challenges such as affordability of homes have enforced our society to commute to a more sustainable development. This has led to the Flemish energy legislation "EPB" which called for a more energy efficient upgrade of our Flemish housing stock. However, the high focus on energy-efficiency induced new problems such as increased material use by wrapping up the building envelope with large quantities of additional materials and techniques which also led to higher building costs. Moreover, typically the whole building is considered as a climatized volume throughout the year, regardless of seasonal changes because user behavior and living patterns are seldomly taken under consideration by designers. Therefore, the aim of this research is the development of an innovative, sustainable dwelling concept that offers a dynamic internal environment in line with more diversified living and heating patterns. By making use of dynamic internal climate zones the energy consumption can be lowered without having to excessively insulate or increase material use and/or building costs while still providing optimal comfort and spatial quality. This research will consist of three main phases. First, by means of case studies, relevant data on sustainable, climate-responsive, dynamic design strategies, user behavior/experiences and living patterns of residents is gathered. Second, a dynamic dwelling concept will be developed by doing research by design and constant qualitative and quantitative evaluation through assessment methods. Finally, the concept will be implemented in the context of shrinkage by which the surplus of traditional, static and underused dwellings, limited financial resources and a need for sustainability are questioned. The relevance of this research is to provide new dwelling concepts that allow a sustainable renovation of the traditional Flemish dwelling with minimal interventions in the living environment of the resident.

This paper states the underlying concept and motivation of the design and building process of a Universal Design (UD) living lab that opened in 2013. The UD-lab is located in the city centre of Hasselt, Belgium and initiates three main ambitions: demonstration, conducting research and offering information on the added values of Universal Designing. The paper confirms the importance of global real life initiatives in order to drive forward the general awareness on Universal Designing, as ongoing activity. Besides the paper stresses the fact that the impact of small local initiatives may instantly bridge the gap between government, institutions and the population at large by means of a UD-attitude.

The social, academic and political field embraces Design for All (DfA), Universal Design (UD) or Inclusive Design (ID) more and more as a global strategy to help formulating answers towards a more inclusive and sustainable world. The ageing population as well as the search for social relevant design, result in an increasing need for design methods and supportive design methodologies. While theoretical studies and knowledge in DfA are growing, the need for more insights and ways to link knowledge and practice is still inadequate. Although the aim is to design an inclusively built environment, the paradox lies in the fact that designers are frequently confronted with non-inclusive information themselves. The tools, methods or methodologies for the design process in order to improve or check the user-friendliness often lack a clear and understandable language itself. However, the strength of a good design tool that may influence the designer's attitude towards a more inclusive design result will lie in the effectiveness and inclusiveness of the tool itself. Therefore, it is crucial to translate the existing theory into information adjusted to the level and needs of the architect. Literature study confirms that there is no design methodology available which efficiently supports the architect at several levels of inclusive design. This research focuses on the development of a supportive, user-friendly design methodology that integrates more inclusive design tools during the design process. In other words, the design methodology itself will attempts to answer the 7 UD principles as well as the conditions that architects consider as important requirements. This research investigates an inclusive design methodology supportive for an inclusive design attitude in order to realize a time-efficient, accurate and accessible approach throughout the design process.

This article introduces a method for advancing environmental and social sustainability objectives in relation to home renovations laid out in European and Belgian policies. The comfort tool is an instrument that simultaneously addresses the energy efficiency and universal design aspects of a sustainable home renovation while being usable and meaningful to laymen homeowners and improving their communication with building professionals. It is based on recent research exploring a synergetic merging of energy efficiency and universal design in housing through the concept of indoor environmental comfort. It employs comfort as a way of intervening in the decision-making process for energy efficiency and universal design measures in home renovations. The comfort tool takes a user-centered approach and rests on an interdisciplinary set of theoretical constructs bringing together knowledge from psychology, nursing, design, and building sciences. Besides describing the method itself, the article lays out the theoretical underpinnings and motivations behind its development and discusses relevant future considerations for sustainable home renovations research and practice.

Literature, governmental and policy goals reveal a need to merge the, until now separately considered, concepts of Universal Design (UD) and Energy Efficiency (EE) in home renovations. Using the concept of Comfort as a framework that unifies UD and EE a list of 21 comfort indicators was developed based on literature research and a set of 3 qualitative studies. The indicators were developed to describe comfort at home from the perspective of residents so that they may be used by the residents to better understand their renovation needs, to communicate those needs with professionals, and so that policy can be better targeted accordingly. This poster discusses a survey with 145 homeowners to check whether these comfort indicators were indeed important from a homeowner's perspective when building or renovating their home. Of particular interest was how important the indicators are relative to each other; and if there are any inter-relations between them. The investigation included the important triggers and goals of renovation, their relations to each other and to socio-economic data. Among other things the results show that the list of comfort indicators used can be considered reasonably concise and complete. The indicators fall into 3 groups in order of importance with EE associated indicators located somewhere in the middle pack. This order remains similar regardless of whether the respondents' plan to build a new home, renovate, or have no concrete plans yet. An increase in comfort and an increase of the energy efficiency of the home are the most common triggers and goals for renovations. There is little change between the reasons why people started to think of a renovation (triggers) and the final goals of the renovations. The involvement of an architect seems to have no effect on this. The deeper understanding of comfort indicators, as a link between EE and UD, and their importance for homeowners supports our efforts to develop a user-focused synergetic merger of UD and EE in practice and research. The indicators can be used to build communication or assessment tools that bridge the gap between homeowners and professionals of all types involved in home renovations.

Literature, governmental and policy goals reveal a need to merge the, until now separately considered, concepts of Universal Design (UD) and Energy Efficiency (EE) in home renovations. Using the concept of Comfort as a framework that unifies UD and EE a list of 21 comfort indicators was developed based on literature research and a set of 3 qualitative studies. The indicators were developed to describe comfort at home from the perspective of residents so that they may be used by the residents to better understand their renovation needs, to communicate those needs with professionals, and so that policy can be better targeted accordingly. This poster discusses a survey with 145 homeowners to check whether these comfort indicators were indeed important from a homeowner's perspective when building or renovating their home. Of particular interest was how important the indicators are relative to each other; and if there are any inter-relations between them. The investigation included the important triggers and goals of renovation, their relations to each other and to socio-economic data. Among other things the results show that the list of comfort indicators used can be considered reasonably concise and complete. The indicators fall into 3 groups in order of importance with EE associated indicators located somewhere in the middle pack. This order remains similar regardless of whether the respondents' plan to build a new home, renovate, or have no concrete plans yet. An increase in comfort and an increase of the energy efficiency of the home are the most common triggers and goals for renovations. There is little change between the reasons why people started to think of a renovation (triggers) and the final goals of the renovations. The involvement of an architect seems to have no effect on this. The deeper understanding of comfort indicators, as a link between EE and UD, and their importance for homeowners supports our efforts to develop a user-focused synergetic merger of UD and EE in practice and research. The indicators can be used to build communication or assessment tools that bridge the gap between homeowners and professionals of all types involved in home renovations.

Literature, governmental and policy goals reveal a need to merge the, until now separately considered, concepts of Universal Design (UD) and Energy Efficiency (EE) in home renovations. Using the concept of Comfort from the perspective of homeowners, as a framework that unifies UD and EE, a list of 21 comfort indicators was developed. This paper discusses a survey undertaken with 145 homeowners to check whether these comfort indicators were indeed important from a homeowner's perspective when building or renovating their home. It also looked at their relative importance and any possible interconnections between the indicators. In addition, the survey explored the triggers and goals of home renovations. The results show that the developed list of comfort indicators can be considered reasonably concise and complete. Comfort factors fall into 3 groups of importance with EE associated indicators located somewhere in the middle pack. This order does not significantly change between people who plan to build a new home, those who plan to renovate, and those who do not have concrete plans yet. The deeper understanding of indoor comfort indicators and their importance for homeowners supports our efforts to develop a user-focused synergetic merger of UD and EE under the umbrella of indoor environmental comfort in practice and research.

Accessibility is often translated in design practice by means of a prescriptive approach, focusing on legislation's application, instead of understanding the real needs and wishes of users. On the contrary, the descriptive and performance-based approach of Design for All can help architects in designing inclusive environments. Therefore, it is fundamental to translate the existing theory into information that meets the architects' needs to link knowledge and practice. This study focuses on methods to inspire and support architects applying a Design for All strategy by gathering information and advice. In particular, the paper demonstrates a literature review to identify how to transfer design guidelines to architects. Based on the analysis of the included papers, four criteria were defined to translate Design for All information from users' needs into design indications for architects in a descriptive way. The current results will provide the basis for developing a tool to inspire and create awareness for architects on Design for All in architectural practice.

Accessibility is often translated in design practice by means of aprescriptive approach, focusing on legislation's application, instead of understanding the real needs and wishes of users. On the contrary, the descriptive and performance-based approach of Design for All can help architects in designing inclusive environments. Therefore, it is fundamental to translate the existing knowledge into information that meets the architects' needs to link knowledge and practice. This study focuses on methods to inspire and support architects applying a Design for All strategy by gathering information and advice. In particular, the paper demonstrates a literature review to identify how to transfer design information to architects. Based on the analysis of the included papers, four criteria were defined to translate Design for All information from users' needs into design strategies for architects in a descriptive way. The current results will provide the basis for developing a tool to inspire and create awareness for architects on Design for All in architectural practice. ; Peer Reviewed

Accessibility is often translated in design practice by means of a prescriptive approach, focusing on legislation's application, instead of understanding the real needs and wishes of users. On the contrary, the descriptive and performance-based approach of Design for All can help architects in designing inclusive environments. Therefore, it is fundamental to translate the existing theory into information that meets the architects' needs to link knowledge and practice. This study focuses on methods to inspire and support architects applying a Design for All strategy by gathering information and advice. In particular, the paper demonstrates a literature review to identify how to transfer design guidelines to architects. Based on the analysis of the included papers, four criteria were defined to translate Design for All information from users' needs into design indications for architects in a descriptive way. The current results will provide the basis for developing a tool to inspire and create awareness for architects on Design for All in architectural practice.