The house you're building today will still be your house at 80
- Wayne Du Bruyn
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
KNX, accessible design, and why this conversation needs to happen at the brief stage. Not after the walls are up.
Most of the clients I speak with are in their forties or fifties. They're building or renovating a home they intend to stay in for the rest of their lives. They're spending serious money: on the architecture, on the finishes, on the landscaping. And almost none of them are thinking about what that house needs to do for them when they're 75.
That's a problem. Not a distant, theoretical one. A practical one with a very specific window to solve it.
South Africa's elderly population is growing faster than most people realise
Statistics South Africa puts the country's over-60 population at 6.8 million right now. By mid-century that number is projected to nearly double, hitting 13.4 million. Gauteng alone is looking at a 60% increase in its older population. These aren't distant forecasts. This is the trajectory of people who are already alive.
And the preference, almost universally, is to stay home. Around 75% of older adults say they want to age in place, in their own home and their own neighbourhood. The alternative, a residential care facility, is expensive, restrictive, and not what anyone is planning for themselves.
So the question isn't whether this matters. It's whether the home you're building now will be capable of supporting you when you need it to.
Why this is an automation conversation, not just a grab-bar conversation
There's a version of "accessible design" that means wider corridors and grab rails in the bathroom. That's necessary but not sufficient.
The harder part isn't physical access. It's control.
As people age, mobility changes. Dexterity changes. The cognitive load of managing a complex environment, lights, climate, security, blinds, compounds quietly. Small inconveniences become genuine obstacles. Getting up at 2am to turn off a light you forgot becomes a fall risk. Managing a thermostat with small buttons becomes frustrating. Losing track of whether you locked the gate is anxiety-inducing.
A home that does more automatically, that responds to voice and allows one-press control from wherever you are, actively supports independence. That's what KNX does, and it's worth being specific about how.
What KNX actually changes for aging in place
Scene control
One button press, or a voice command, sets the whole house for the night. Everything locked, lights off, gate secured, alarm armed. You don't need to walk around checking. You press one button from the bedroom. That matters far more at 80 than it does at 50.
Automated lighting paths
Motion detection can light a path from the bedroom to the bathroom at night without waking a partner, at a level that doesn't disorient someone who just woke up. Falls happen. This is one of the simplest things a properly wired system can do to reduce that risk, and it requires no conscious effort from the occupant.
Climate without fiddling
A KNX-integrated HVAC system maintains programmed temperatures throughout the day, adjusting by zone and responding to occupancy. Nobody needs to walk to the wall controller. SA winters in Joburg get cold. An older person with limited mobility shouldn't have to get up to adjust the heating.
Voice control
KNX integrates with Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomeKit through a 1Home gateway. That's genuine hands-free control of lighting, blinds, climate and more. No touchscreens required. For someone with limited dexterity or early cognitive impairment, this is the difference between staying in your own home and not.
Emergency response
Panic buttons. Motion sensors that can flag unusual inactivity to a caregiver or family member. Leak detection that automatically closes a valve. These aren't medical devices. They're building infrastructure that a KNX system can incorporate and respond to.
Load shedding resilience
This is the SA-specific layer most people don't think through. If you're relying on automated lighting paths, emergency buttons or gate control, those systems need to work during load shedding. A KNX installation designed properly, with UPS coverage on critical circuits, keeps the automation that supports an elderly person's independence operational through a two-hour stage 4 blackout. A cheap Wi-Fi system drops the moment Eskom does.
The brief problem
Here's where I see things go wrong. The accessibility conversation almost never happens at the design stage.
By the time an architect or interior designer hands a brief to an electrical contractor, it's already too late to properly spec a system for aging in place over the long term. The cable routes are decided. The switch positions are fixed. The conduit runs are done.
KNX is a wired protocol. The wiring is the infrastructure. Getting this right requires a decision at the brief stage, not during finishes selection. The cost to spec it correctly from day one is a fraction of what retrofitting looks like later. I've quoted both. The gap is not trivial.
The other thing worth saying directly: KNX doesn't age out. The system running in a building can be updated, reconfigured and extended without replacing the wiring. If you spec a KNX installation today and in fifteen years new voice assistant platforms emerge, or new sensor types become available, or your needs change, the system adapts. That's the nature of an open standard with 500+ certified manufacturers and 35 years of backwards compatibility.
What architects and interior designers should be considering
Foster + Partners now has a dedicated Inclusive Design Team. Suzan Ucmaklioglu, their Associate Partner for Inclusive Design, has said directly that "adjustable lighting, smart wayfinding can significantly improve people's experiences." The KNXtoday journal in late 2025 put it bluntly: smart automation systems like KNX are "no longer optional add-ons, but essential infrastructure, delivering dignity, autonomy and safety for all users, regardless of ability."
Projects like Casa Capace in Australia are setting a concrete benchmark for what this looks like when it's taken seriously from the start: KNX-controlled automated electric doors, adjustable bench heights, programmable lighting scenes, blinds and HVAC all controlled from a single interface.
The South African luxury build market is already delivering technically sophisticated homes. The gap is that accessibility-by-design isn't yet a standard inclusion in most high-end residential briefs. It should be.
Where to start
If you're in the brief stage on a project, this is the right moment. Spec the wiring, include KNX in the electrical contract, and make the decisions now that your client won't have to redo at significant cost in ten years.
If you're a homeowner already in a KNX-wired home, a lot of what I've described here can be added through configuration and a few additional devices. It's worth a conversation.
Happy to talk through what this looks like for a specific project. Just a conversation about what the project needs.
wayne@knxlogic.co.za | 082 564 3982 | www.knxlogic.co.za
Sources: KNX Association, "Enhanced Accessibility: How KNX Helps People with Disabilities Live Independently" (Jan 2025) | KNXtoday, "KNX for Architects: The Engine Behind Inclusive and Accessible Spaces" (Nov 2025) | Statistics South Africa, Older Population reports | The Conversation, "South Africa's Ageing Population Comes With New Challenges" | Age Safe America, Smart Home Devices for Senior Independence 2026
Comments