Enriching Our Understanding of Architecture Through Disability Experience

Abstract

The relationship between the built environment and the human body is rarely considered explicitly in contemporary architecture. In case architects do take the body into account, they tend to derive mathematical proportions or functional dimensions from it, without explicit attention for the bodily experience of a building. In this article, we analyse the built environment in a way less common in architecture, by attending to how a particular person experiences it. Instead of relating the human body to architecture in a mathematical way, we establish a new relationship between architecture and the body—or a body—by demonstrating that our bodies are more involved in the experience of the built environment than we presume. The article focuses on persons with a sensory or physical impairment as they are able to detect building qualities architects may not be attuned to. By accompanying them during a visit to a museum building, we examine how their experiences relate to the architect's intentions. In attending to the bodily experiences of these disabled persons, we provide evidence that architecture is not only seen, but experienced by all senses, and that aesthetics may acquire a broader meaning. Senses can be disconnected or reinforced by nature. Sensory experiences can be consciously or unconsciously eliminated or emphasized by the museum design and use. Architects can have specific intentions in mind, but users (with an impairment) may not experience them. Attending to the experiences of disabled persons, and combining these with the architect's objectives, provides an interesting view of a building. Our analysis does not intend to criticize the one using the other; rather the combination of both views, each present in the building, makes for a richer understanding of what architecture is.

Meta-analysis of studies on the impact of mobility disability simulation programs on attitudes toward people with disabilities and environmental in/accessibility

“…Although some past studies interpreted these immediate emotional outcomes as undesirable consequences of these simulation programs [8,14], it might be turn out to be associated with the empathetic understanding of environmental barriers to challenge ableism [29,30]. It might promote the awareness of the stigmatizing nature and detrimental impact of environmental inaccessibility [8,14].…”

“…It might hinder the empirical assessment of any contextualized emotional change due to participation in disability simulation programs. For example, taking the significant improvement in conception of social inclusion into account, the increase in anger and anxiety could plausibly be an indicator of an enhanced empathetic understanding of the psychological burden brought about by environmental inaccessibility for people with mobility disability [29][30][31]. Future empirical investigation to critically disentangle the mechanism, source, target, and the very nature of these emotional responses is highly warranted.…”

“…Would these emotions target the injustice behind environmental inaccessibility encountered during the simulation programs, the simulated disability per se, or people with disabilities in society? If participants showed righteous anger toward the underlying injustice of environmental inaccessibility, the resulting changes might motivate the participants to engage in inclusion-affirming advocacy groups and collective actions for social inclusion based on the Social Identity Model of Collective Actions [29,30,73,74]. Practical solutions to environmental inaccessibility might be coconstructed throughout the program process and especially during the debriefing session [3,8,9,54].…”

A Review of Inclusive Design and Multisensory Interactions Studies and Applications in Public Spaces.

“…Intensive discussions between users and architects apply the shared communicative elements to achieve a mutual understanding to establish design guidelines or criteria [35]. Self-report, time sampling, behavior inference, and psychophysical and phenomenological methods can be appropriate for this approach.…”

Inclusive architectural design model with environmental and ecological strategies

“…Figure2. Entrance to museum M in Leuven, Belgium (Heylighen et al, 2013). Kapsayıcı tasarım bina ölçeğinde ele alındığında binanın toplu taşımaya olan mesafesi, yürüme güçlüğü çekenler için yakınlarda otopark imkanı ve binaya girmek ve gezinmek için düşük fiziksel çaba gereksinimi tasarım kararlarında önem arz etmektedir (Connell vd., 1997).…”