Accessible Architecture

A history of design that is often overlooked—until we need it Have you ever hit the big blue button to activate automatic doors? Have you ever used an ergonomic kitchen tool? Have you ever used curb cuts to roll a stroller across an intersection? If you have, then you’ve benefited from accessible design—design for people with physical, sensory, and cognitive disabilities. These ubiquitous touchstones of modern life were once anything but. Disability advocates fought tirelessly to ensure that the needs of people with disabilities became a standard part of public design thinking. That fight took many forms worldwide, but in the United States it became a civil rights issue; activists used design to make an argument about the place of people with disabilities in public life. In the aftermath of World War II, with injured veterans returning home and the polio epidemic reaching the Oval Office, the needs of people with disabilities came forcibly into the public eye as they never had before. The US became the first country to enact federal accessibility laws, beginning with the Architectural Barriers Act in 1968 and continuing through the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, bringing about a wholesale rethinking of our built environment. This progression wasn’t straightforward or easy. Early legislation and design efforts were often haphazard or poorly implemented, with decidedly mixed results. Political resistance to accommodating the needs of people with disabilities was strong; so, too, was resistance among architectural and industrial designers, for whom accessible design wasn’t “real” design. Bess Williamson provides an extraordinary look at everyday design, marrying accessibility with aesthetic, to provide an insight into a world in which we are all active participants, but often passive onlookers. Richly detailed, with stories of politics and innovation, Williamson’s Accessible America takes us through this important history, showing how American ideas of individualism and rights came to shape the material world, often with unexpected consequences.

Accessible architecture makes possible an independent and self-determined lifestyle, encouraging mobility, integration and the cohabitation of all groups, including different age groups.This book presents fifty current projects with the aid of photos, plans and diagrams. They communicate a modern language of form, helping to create and shape contemporary living spaces for people. A provocative plea for genuinely barrier-free buildings and an illustrated commentary on the DIN norms complete this new standard text.

"This book contains a number of indications to achieve the accessible design. You can read it as a summary, as a checklist of choices to make and to avoid, or - even better - to find accessible architectural solutions. Because accessibility and inclusion concern any architectural project just like wall, foundations, power lines and windows. Accessibility is not an issue to be addressed once the project is finished just placing a "disabled" sign to the ladies' restroom and installing a very tall toilet; it must be considered from the start in order to make sensible and functional choices that are consistent with the general architectural and aesthetic choices. This book is divided in areas/phases (public spaces, buildings, furniture and indications): you can refer to the chapters you need depending on what you are designing and its actual design stage to make your own inclusive and accessible choices."--back cover.

A radical critique of architecture that places disability at the heart of the built environment Disability critiques of architecture usually emphasize the need for modification and increased access, but The Architecture of Disability calls for a radical reorientation of this perspective by situating experiences of impairment as a new foundation for the built environment. With its provocative proposal for “the construction of disability,” this book fundamentally reconsiders how we conceive of and experience disability in our world. Stressing the connection between architectural form and the capacities of the human body, David Gissen demonstrates how disability haunts the history and practice of architecture. Examining various historic sites, landscape designs, and urban spaces, he deconstructs the prevailing functionalist approach to accommodating disabled people in architecture and instead asserts that physical capacity is essential to the conception of all designed space. By recontextualizing the history of architecture through the discourse of disability, The Architecture of Disability presents a unique challenge to current modes of architectural practice, theory, and education. Envisioning an architectural design that fully integrates disabled persons into its production, it advocates for looking beyond traditional notions of accessibility and shows how certain incapacities can offer us the means to positively reimagine the roots of architecture.

Freedom from barriers makes an independent and self-determined lifestyle possible, encouraging mobility and integration in the cohabitation of all groups of people, including the elderly and disabled, group that have been marginalized for a long time in the design and planning of houses and building. From houses, offices and museums to specific spaces like kitchens, approximate 50 current projects are presented with the help of texts, photos, plans and diagrams. These projects communicate a modern language of form helping to create and shape contemporary living spaces for people that are free of discrimination and are able to be used by all.