Designing for the Disabled: The New Paradigm. - book reviews

Architectural Review, The, March, 1998 by Louis Hellman

Pity the poor architect who is so creatively crippled when designing for people that he (sic) has to resort to crutches in the form of design guides, those handy manuals for an ideal ergonomic utopia inhabited by standard, average ciphers. Of course in reality there is no such animal as an average person. We are all unique non-modular individuals, although in public design terms there has to be some kind of common denominator, albeit broader than the notion of the 'average'. Many people who do not conform to this average have been disabled by architects and their clients through arbitrary changes of level, inadequate space standards, unsafe surfaces and so on.

It might seem that Selwyn Goldsmith exploded the hegemony of the average when he published Designing for the Disabled in 1963, a design guide that quickly became known as the bible for architects seeking information on access for people with disabilities and has since run to two further editions. But, like subsequent UK legislation, it marginalized 'the disabled' as a special problem with provision tacked on as an afterthought, the odd ramp here or 'disabled WC' there.

Goldsmith has since recognized that it is not that designers have ignored the needs of disabled people but that they have often ignored the needs of people full stop. Design guides can become a substitute for the architect's much vaunted creative imagination, prescriptive solutions to be mindlessly transferred onto the drawing. Yet the architect's unique contribution is (or should be) the provision of inclusive, safe and comfortable environments which cater for everyone whether they be able-bodied, driving pushchairs, elderly, young, crippled, pregnant, short, tall and so on and so on.

Goldsmith's new book Designing for the Disabled: The New Paradigm (excruciating title) is markedly different from its predecessor. The first part comprises a comprehensive and critical review of the history of disability awareness from the late '50s to today's legislation. Part II analyses 'architectural disablement' in detail and Part III offers some alternative suggestions as to how our current rigid and marginalizing legislation might be recast in more flexible and pragmatic terms which allow some freedom for architects, clients and inspectors to evolve suitable solutions.

There are few instant design guide type formulae, rather an exposition of requirements and parameters. This is the sensible way to educate architects and designers and at the same time draw on their imaginative powers to evolve new solutions to the complexities of universal design.

Everyone concerned with the built environment should read this book, particularly Parts II and III and the extensive and revealing appendices which dispel the myth of the average. Meanwhile I look forward to a third book entitled perhaps Designing for People: The Architecture of Democracy?