WE QUESTION THE COMPETENCE AND CARING
OF ARCHITECTS WHO CANNOT DESIGN INCLUSIVELY FOR ALL
I’m now officially 54.
I’ve walked the Earth for more than
half a century.
My wife and I have a combined
century-plus of life experience.
Speaking of my spouse of 30+ years:
she uses a wheelchair for mobility.
It never made her less of a person to
me. Yet, clearly, it makes her less of a person to a lot of architects and
designers.
They bristle at even the simplest
request to design bathrooms that are comfortable for her, or to design
accessible front entrances (as opposed to the "deliveries only" back
entrance) and that they don’t relegate her to third-class citizen status
because she can’t negotiate their grand (or is that grandiose?) stair cases.
I posted a couple days ago that my
simple birthday wish was that urban designers, town planners, architects,
engineers, landscape architects and the entire lot of other designers and
regulators – in both the public and private sectors – admit that if they’re
worth a damn, they can design for all.
The blog item ended up drawing out the
inflexibility and closed-mindedness of planner/urban designer types.
Being all about inclusion, I have
dedicated this essay to shaming architects, engineers and others who design for
the built environment yet push back against the concept of universal design.
If I had a dollar for every architect
-- from no-name designers of chain sandwich shops to world-famous starchitects
(whose influence rivals their out-sized egos) – who call “no fair" on the
ADA, I’d have enough money to sue all of them for malpractice.
The civil engineer or town planner who
cannot seem to design a community park without stairs that push wheelchair
users off to some corner and the architect who balks at designing for all
should be off flipping burgers at the mall or otherwise making an honorable
living that doesn't create a segregated world off limits to tens of millions of
people with disabilities.
“But the ADA puts us in a nanny state.
I have someone looking over my shoulder, so I can’t think creatively before I
sit down to design my building,” says the pigheaded architect.
So that must mean when the height
district is capped at 30 stories, you walk away from the commission. Such a
restriction on your "build to the moon" mentality makes it impossible
for you to work.
Or if your town center must fit on 40
acres, you turn away the client because your dream design covers 50 acres and
you just can’t be constrained.
Sound idiotic, on the border of French
farce? I’m just starting.
So if an accessibility standard
destroys the design process, then do architects disregard fire, electrical,
plumbing, HVAC requirements?
What about flood plain issues? These
are major constraints to building design.
Why are these code requirements seen
as a welcome challenge, a chance for creativity, an opportunity to show off
skills and resilience? Why do architects meet that new challenge
with boundless enthusiasm, yet turn spiteful toward a wider entrance, a larger
bathroom, a lowered sink, a zero-step entrance?
Perhaps the reason is prejudice: pure
and simple. The AIA’s finest are harboring these toxic attitudes toward
designing for anything but the mythical 5 foot 10, 180-pound, non-disabled
male.
In South Florida, we have building
requirements about roofs, shutters, impact class, construction materials, etc.
to keep our residents from perishing inside a structure not built to withstand
100+ mile per hour hurricane winds.
How is it that architects accept
hurricane building standards yet resist designing for inclusion?
If it is not bigotry -- specifically
ableism -- I don’t know what it can be.
As a reporter, public servant and
communications consultant, I have talked to world famous architects who have
had the guts to point at their woeful retrofit, their shameful defiance of ADA,
their new tower with built-in barriers to all but the most fit of occupants…and
say “you know, I’ve never had wheelchair users complain about the usefulness of
my buildings.”
Maybe they can’t even get in the
place, because your entrance has stairs with a sad, little mechanical outdoor
lift off to the side. A lift that will inevitably break down within a month
leaving people with disabilities out in the cold.
When you put up barriers – physical,
visual, symbolic – you effectively discriminate against one out of five
Americans. People who have every right to enter without needing to be carried,
lifted, or directed toward the locked back door adjacent to the garbage bins.
I will say this to the grave: if you
are unwilling or unable to design for all, then you should surrender your
professional license.
Go make floral arrangements, or the
prettiest cupcakes for sale at the mall.
But please -- for the sake of social
equality -- stop designing. The world is already filled with prejudice and
hate. We don't need it in our buildings, too.
