Inclusion & Access: Revisiting Universal Design

LAB: PEOPLE & DESIGN

DIVISION: EDUCATION

 
IA01.jpg

Landscape architects and urban designers are tasked with the critical responsibility to design inclusive and accessible environments for all users - those with physical, intellectual, developmental, or cognitive disabilities.

OLIN Labs seeks to design for disabled people and their unique needs by revisiting Universal Design and asking designers to assess existing design models and projects in order to more intentionally include disabled folks as stakeholders and disabled designers as experts in the design process.

Abled designers cannot know all of the difficulties that disabled people experience in the built environment, but they can advocate to include disabled stakeholders in the design process and can work to change public policy in order to implement Universal Design throughout the public realm. By approaching design through the lens of the social model of disability, designers can work to identify and design out barriers to full social inclusion.

During her time at OLIN, former People Lab member Alexa Vaughn worked on Design with Disabled People Now: A Toolkit for Landscape Architects and Planners to Create Accessible & Inclusive Landscapes as part of her Landscape Architecture Foundation’s Fellowship for Innovation and Leadership project. This project built upon the work that she and fellow People Lab member Danielle Toronyi contributed as advisors to the ASLA’s Universal Design Resource Guide, which features OLIN’s Dilworth Park - a universally-accessible public plaza at Philadelphia's City Hall.

Related Projects

Publications

Related Press