ABSTRACT
Disability sits in a peculiar position within architecture and urban design. Whilst readers and anthologies already exist that explore architecture and other identities of difference – such as gender (Matrix 1984, Weisman 1994, Massey 1994, Agrest et al. 1996, Hughes 1998, Borden et al. 1999), sexuality (Colomina 1992, Sanders 1996, Betsky 1997) and race (Lokko 2000, Barton 2001, Wilkins 2007) – disability as a concept, and disabled people as a constituency, continue to be assumed as completely separate from social or cultural politics. Within the discipline of architecture disability remains predominantly framed by design guidance and building regulations on the one hand, and by a ‘common sense’ language of accessibility and inclusive/universal design on the other. Neither of these approaches is wrong. What is extraordinary is that both because of and despite these existing framings, disability has somehow remained consistently stuck in a non-historical, atheoretical and – most crucially – seriously underexplored category in relationship to building design practices. It is invisible in both avant-garde and mainstream architectural theories and discourses, just as it is a persistent absence in critical and cultural theory more generally (Davis 2002, Davidson 2008). Perhaps this illustrates just how deeply disability remains widely avoided, compared to other disadvantaged identities. Unlike gender, race or sexuality then – and the feminist, post-colonial and queer studies which underpin associated scholarship and debate – it seems that we assume ‘disability’ to be unable to bring any kind of criticality or creativity to the discipline of architecture.
