MIT Department of Architecture
Fall 2018 Lecture Series

Experiments in Pedagogy
Architectural Access: Code and Care
Organized by Gabriel Cira and Emily Watlington

The Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) outlines requirements for architectural accessibility. While the adoption of this code was monumental for disability rights, serving as minimum requirements for architects who might otherwise not consider the needs of disabled people, it unfortunately frames “access” as an exclusively architectural concern while also inhibiting experimentation or negotiation.

As Marta Russell posits in her 1998 book Beyond Ramps: Disability at the End of the Social Contract, ramps—non-ambulatory access to buildings—have been privileged over other issues including socio-economic access. Further, the code has limited provisions that accommodate evolving conceptions of difference, disability, and neurodivergence shaped by the burgeoning output of disability scholars and activists of the past thirty years.

This two-week workshop will feature a series of themed duet-style lectures with a range of expert artists, theorists, architects, and activists.  The themes are: Body Extensions and Environ- ment Hacks, Technorealism, Code and Care, and Universal Access and Community-based Practice. The workshop proposes vital unaddressed avenues of design thinking that should always be part of architectural pedagogy and practice.

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6
Sara Hendren and Wendy Jacob
Body Extensions and Environment Hacks
This duet-lecture showcases critical and experimental attitudes toward designing for disability enabled by artistic practice, often approaching design from the bottom-up through user-generated hacks. 
6 pm, Room 7-429

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7
David Gissen and Valerie Fletcher (Institute for Human-Centered Design)
Disability and/or Preservation
A building generally reflects the accommodation sensibilities and/or requirements (or lack thereof) of its time. The International Building Code largely allows existing/historic buildings to defer compliance with contemporary accessibility standards, often rendering accessibility at odds with the some approaches to preservation. This tension is the subject of this duet-lecture. 
6 PM, Room 7-429

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15: 
Lisa Freed and Matt Carney (MIT Biomechatronics) and Meryl Alper
Disability Tech
This duet-lecture brings together expert voices in the nascent field of disability STS alongside designers of state-of-the-art prosthetics for a conversation about the ethics, history, and processes of using/understanding technology as an extension of the body. 
6 PM, Room 7-429

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16:
Aimi Hamraie, David Mitchell, and Sharon Snyder
Universal Design and Its Discontents
This duet-lecture investigates the history of how and under what circumstances principles of “Universal Design” came to be, asking who has come to count as “universal” and considering how politics of universalism have worked to erase difference. 
5 PM, Room 7-429

All lectures are wheelchair accessible and fragrance free. Please do not wear any scented products. If you need a disability-related accommodation, please contact: Emily Watlington, emilywat@mit.edu.