Abstract
Since aging has become one of most hot and serious issues in the whole global world, universal design as a strategic concept to enable the elderly age in place has received much attention and its importance is getting recognized. Japan has undergone the Aging phenomenon much earlier than Korea and other countries. During that time, through much trials and errors, it accumulated the wisdoms and techniques to precede aging friendly environment and products. Therefore current Japan house is a comprehensive setting which embraces lots of universal design features that has a valuable implication for Korean development that faces fast aging future. The purpose of this study was to delineate characteristics of universal design features appeared in Japanese Model houses. One site of housing park in the city where various model houses of representative housing construction companies was selected as a cluster area for data collecting. Data were collected mainly through field survey at the housing park of Tokyo during November, 2006, and additional data were collected through website and company information of relevant company. Universal design features were extracted for 17 houses of the housing park and sorted and analyzed according to the analysis frame. The frame were made using 2 major clusters; space area, and 8 universal design principle. Results showed a range of universal design feature and its detail universal design principle satisfied. The 8 principle currently developed became to house realistic practical examples and theory became proved its impractical power. The academic, educational and industrial implication were documented.
