Abstract

This paper presents a grounded theory study conceptualizing the socio-spatial relationships of residents with dementia diagnoses in two residential care homes in the United Kingdom. The study challenges generalizations and abstractions of occupants in the design the care home and prioritizes residents' lived experiences and aspirations as rich sources of design knowledge to enabling articulation of new conceptual-spatial relationships between residents and their physical environment. Mixed qualitative methods were used to build knowledge and construct theory directly from participants in fieldwork and the constant comparison method was used to derive a grounded theory of the research context. A theory model is constructed that encompasses embodied spatial characteristics and discrepancies in the representation and realization of residential care homes. Moreover, the paper illustrates ethical and methodological approaches to architectural research fieldwork in environments with vulnerable people and suggests further research to address co-design methodologies and ethics in architectural research.