Spaces are always an expression of power. Look around — whether you’re encountering broken lifts, squeezing through a sleek, narrow doorway, teetering down a dimly-lit stairway to a wine bar, or leaping up the stone steps to your front door, barriers exist everywhere for disabled people. Every angle is endowed with the potential to exclude and include — telling us who is welcome, who will be at ease in the world, and who is left alienated. When you start taking notice, the reminders of able-bodied privilege are endless.
While writing my recent book, See Me Rolling, I began to investigate these inequalities, asking, is ableism entrenched in our surroundings? As disability activists maintain, inaccessible architecture is often much more disabling than a person’s differences. It’s not someone’s biological condition that classifies them as ‘disabled’. Rather disability is created when our built environment has a rigid idea how a ‘normal’ body should function. Consider a chair, for instance. As someone with a muscle weakness disability that affects my physical strength, I have first-hand experience. When a chair seat is very low, I must exert a lot of effort to stand up from sitting and I feel the effect of my disability. However, if the seat is higher up, I can seamlessly stand up. And I am not alone. With 16 million disabled people living in the UK — and an estimated one billion worldwide — this is an issue that deserves more scrutiny in the design world.
Ideas of “incapacity and capacity” are “embedded in our buildings, landscapes, and cities” confirms David Gissen, author of The Architecture of Disability and a Professor at New York’s Parsons School of Design. From the hostile design of old buildings, to the untraversable landscapes of public parks, Gissen believes a more nuanced understanding of architectural ableism is critical. “In a post-Covid-19 world, the number of disabled people has only increased” he explains. “Additionally, with an older population, disablement and impairment are more systemic aspects of everyday life.” But, Gissen explains that improving the situation is an uphill struggle when “very few disabled people are practising architects or designers.”
So how can we fix this? What will it take to root disability-friendly adaptations into swoon-worthy design?
First of all, accessibility should never be an afterthought. To create spaces that are tailor-made for a range of disabilities, design teams must first engage with disabled people and understand their unique experiences of inhabiting space. How do you manoeuvre around the room by wheelchair? Where do light switches need to be positioned for easy reach? What type of flooring is hazardous to navigate with a cane? This process demands inquisitiveness and humility — designers must accept they don’t know everything and, instead, embark on detective work to better understand the needs of a long-overlooked population. Empathy is vital for building solution-based, yet beautiful, spaces.
This philosophy lies at the heart of Wraxall Yard, a former dairy farm in Dorset that was transformed into accessible holiday lets — and is now shortlisted for this year’s prestigious RIBA Stirling Prize. After acquiring the site in 2018, the father-daughter team, Nick and Katie Read, were eager to give it a new social purpose. Aware of the need for better disability access in the countryside, it became their mission to create inclusive getaways that enveloped guests in peace and nature.
“My mother had MS and was in a wheelchair for 30 years,” Nick Read tells me, explaining the inspiration behind the project. “She felt discriminated against by a built environment that ignored the needs of people with limited mobility. On the rare occasions that a space was adapted, it would invariably be ugly and institutional.”
With the sensitive hand of London-based Clementine Blakemore Architects, Wraxall Yard’s 19th-century buildings were refurbished into five accessible holiday homes as well as a community space and workshop — all without compromising the agricultural heritage of the existing site. Inside the Scandinavian-inspired cottages with exposed roof timbers, an air of tranquillity and warmth is met with supreme functionality. Think rise and fall kitchen worktops, sinks with integrated grab handles, ceiling hoists and height-adjustable beds. No detail is overlooked: the design also incorporates visual contrasts, switches at accessible heights, and even vibrating fire alarms for those with hearing impairments.
“Providing accessible spaces isn’t complicated,” says Read. “If architects made accessibility one of their first considerations, the task would be much simpler. These considerations come too late into the design process, or not at all, which makes adaptions extremely difficult — and usually very expensive.”
From the beginning, the design team worked closely with the Centre for Accessible Environments and held consultations with disabled people to find stylish ways to serve their everyday needs. The feedback from these sessions? A universal desire for the space to never feel clinical. This is no more evident than in Wraxall Yard’s grounds. Step outside to roam the meadow, or pay a visit to the otters at the riverbank, you won’t find any conspicuous ramps, handrails or special wheelchair routes. Instead the whole space is made fully accessible through intelligent landscaping — the topography and pathways delivering gently sloping access.
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The quest to democratise our gardens was also championed at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Designers redefined accessibility in nature: from The National Autistic Society’s cocoon-like garden with calming waterfalls, to Nimbus Disability’s inclusive exhibit which spoke to the unifying powers of the outdoors. The latter featured wheelchair accessible flower beds and a raised Koi pond, linked together by spacious pathways. A descriptive commentary was also available for visitors with visual impairments.
“I’ve realised over the years of having a disabled son, gardens aren’t always very well thought through for people who have additional needs” says Matthew Ball, co-designer of Nimbus’s exhibit and Managing Director of B Ball Contractors. His aim was to show what’s possible when you combine compassion with blue-sky thinking. “I am just a humble builder who has a passion for Koi and a son that’s made us open our eyes. It doesn’t matter what your needs are, if you want to have a pond in your garden you can.”
For too long, exclusionary design has been the gatekeeper of disabled people’s success and well-being. But when designers think expansively and humanely, it opens up the world for people with disabilities. Inclusive design must become synonymous with designing for the future. A future where the built environment no longer dictates whether or not somebody can thrive in their day-to-day life. A future that’s game-changing for disabled people.
