Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Social Scientific Analysis of Architectural Design, Access, and Disability

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This project examines how the meanings of disability become materialized in the built environment. In particular, it looks at the role architecture plays in constituting categories of ability and disability and how this connects to discourses and practices of citizenship. Despite the huge impact of disabled access requirements on practice, architectural scholarship and education hardly engage with the topic. The dissertation will investigate how different architectures create and understand disability, ability, and access, as empirically grounded in three case studies: Het Dorp, a Dutch planned community for the disabled, the New Ed Roberts Campus (ERC) in Berkeley, California, and the controversial inaccessible Board of Supervisors Chamber presidential podium in San Francisco City Hall. The investigator will use a mixed qualitative methodological approach, which includes ethnographic observation at research sites, interviews with users and architects, and critical analysis of representations of disabled access from media and architectural archives. The research will contribute to Science and Technology Studies scholarship on the built environment and to theories of citizenship. The project's broader impact is to reconceptualize the relationship between architecture and disability through the development of new analytical and creative modes that extend beyond the limited terms of code compliance, currently the profession's standard operational practice. For educators and practicing architects, this research will produce insights that can be used to build a flexible design vocabulary and practice, as well as contribute to a dynamic discourse about disability in architectural pedagogy. In addition, the project will provide guidelines for designers and planners to rethink design criteria, thus, contributing to new public policy debates about the relationship between building codes, universal design ideas, and mainstream architectural practice.