A New Fad of “Safety-conscious Apartment Design” among Builders

Home builders are actively incorporating child-proof designs in their apartment building construction. (image: kobizmedia)

SEOUL, Korea, Mar 6 (Korea Bizwire) – Lee Mi-jin, a housewife with two twin boys in her mid-30s, recently had an experience of almost dropping her four-year-old son on the tiled floor while taking him a bath in the bathtub. She said, “I am always worried whenever my kids run around in the house if they get into an accident.”

To address these concerns, home builders are actively incorporating child-proof designs in their apartment building construction. A construction industry official said, “Given women are major decision makers when it comes to buying a house, we have to cater to their needs and wants.”

Of all the places in the house, the bathroom is the most dangerous place for kids to have accidents. Some builders have introduced a low-threshold bathtub with the height of 20 centimeters, more than 50 percent shorter than the usual bathtub height of 50-55 centimeters by burying some of the tub in the ground.

An official of Kolon Global, the contractor for Donam Kolon Hanulchae, the apartment complex with the new bathtub design, said, “For all units on the first floor, we put in low-threshold bathtubs as most of the households on the first floor are families with children.” The apartment complex has a total of 629 units in ten different buildings.

An apartment complex that POSCO Engineering & Construction built in the Songdo International Business District a year ago received good reviews for its bathtub design that added a child’s section on one side. Encouraged by the compliment, the construction company adopted the same design when it built apartment buildings in Seoul’s Haengdang-dong and another in Songdo.

In an apartment complex in Seoul’s Shinjeong-dong sold by Hyundai Engineering & Construction recently, the builder took special care in designing the bathroom drain. Instead of the conventional drain with sharp edges with which children may cut their fingers, the company put in a drain cover made with artificial marble.

In another newly built apartment complex in Dongtan, in the south of Seoul, sold by Keangnam Enterprises from March 14, the builder took extreme care in making all corners of fixtures round so that children won’t be hurt by sharp edges. Hyundai Amco’s new apartment in the Weerye New City features locks to all kitchen furniture doors.

Seo Dae-woo, executive of Hyundai Amco, said, “In the era where children are treated with utmost care, we must go with the trend to make sure children are safe in homes that we build.”

Lifestyle (Follow us @Lifestylenews_Korea)