Disability and architecture

[the_future_modernes]

visit-ability: Making accessible homes in New York

via Feminists With Disabilities

Denial of Access In the Name of “Historic Preservation

“Historic preservation” is an excuse I see used to deny accessibility a lot. In part, it’s because I live 10 miles from the village of Mendocino, which is, quite literally, one big registered historic landmark. In 1971, huge chunks of the town applied for and were granted admission to the National Register of Historic Places. Mendocino takes historic preservation so seriously that they have a Historical Review Board to review any proposed activity, and I mean any proposed activity, which might impact the appearance of the town. Recent selections from their agendas include topics like whether or not signs can be moved two feet to the left, if someone can paint a shed, and if someone may erect a tent in a backyard for two days for an event.

What, exactly, does this have to do with accessibility? Well, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Mendocino is highly committed to historic preservation and extremely inaccessible. Most of the businesses there are only accessible to people who can walk unassisted. Wheelchairs, walkers, and even canes are very difficult to use in Mendocino. The town has narrow, coarse, steeply sloped sidewalks (including original wooden sidewalks) which are extremely difficult to navigate (not least because they are often rendered innavigable with random objects like tables, chairs, discreetly positioned trash cans, and so forth). There are few curb cuts. I can walk unassisted and I have stacked (“fallen spectacularly and painfully,” in California argot) more times than I can count on the sidewalks of Mendocino. The doorways of businesses which one might theoretically reach in a wheelchair are often too narrow for a chair to get through, and almost all are “just one step” doorways. If you’re in a power chair, forget it.MORE

How The Disabilities Act Has Influenced Architecture

Robert Siegel talks to professor Monica Ponce de Leon, dean of the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, about changes in architecture and design 20 years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

For another view on how the ADA has influenced American architecture, we called on Monica Ponce de Leon. She's dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, and she's a proponent of something called universal design, which challenges the notion of able versus disabled.

Instead, Ponce de Leon says universal design encourages architects to think about a wide range of people.

Professor MONICA PONCE DE LEON (Dean, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan): What is powerful about this is that it acknowledges different stages in life so that we can acknowledge kids, middle age and then later in life, as well as people that have different kinds of disabilities.

SIEGEL: So what's an example of that sort of design?

Prof. PONCE DE LEON: So I have a private practice, and we designed a library for Rhode Island School of Design about now six years ago. And in the project, we designed with universal design principles.

So for example, when we designed the cubicles for the library, no two cubicles are actually the same. We used software that allows you to design for variation as a way of creating a whole range of cubicles that had different sizes, differing height tables, different height seating, different widths, so that we could accommodate many different body types in a very subtle way.

SIEGEL: So depending on one's individual needs, one's individual size, or for example if one used a wheelchair, you could find a space that would work for you in that.

Prof. PONCE DE LEON: Exactly. You're actually acknowledging that we all have different degrees of abilities. So at RISD, since you have a student body that is there for four or five years at a time, there was a great possibility that a student may find actually their favorite spot, maybe because their legs are longer than the average or maybe because their height is a little shorter. And it enabled us to embed different ranges of abilities within the design of the space.MORE

1998 Disability as architectural criticism — Yale/Rudolph

In 1996 a former architectural history professor of mine at Columbia asked me how I enjoyed being a student at the Yale School of Architecture, particularly how I enjoyed being an inhabitant of Paul Rudolph’s Architecture + Art Building. Like virtually all students who have been in that building, I think the building is an extraordinary feat of design and construction; The building was just renovated, expanded and renamed, and I can’t wait to see it.

But as a disabled person my relationship to that building was peculiar, to say the least. It’s not just that the building is set over many levels, and many levels on one floor. Navigating the interior spaces and the multiple floor changes and stairs was a pain. The “floating stairs” everywhere, particularly in the entryway leading to the building’s foyer, were particularly difficult to negotiate. What seemed like comedy to my friends, but really just a huge nuisance to me, was, my former professor argued, an avenue to architectural criticism. “You should write about it”, she said, and now more than ten years later I am.MORE

Accessible Housing Society

Green Accessible Home by Jeff Sties Architect