In this webinar, Dr Jos Boys discusses whose bodies matter in current architectural discourses and practices, and how starting from dis/ability challenges design norms.

Disability studies, disability arts and disability activism have long been critiquing assumptions about what kinds of bodyminds matter – who gets valued and who gets marginalised, in order to challenge and remake conventional access and inclusion practices.

Rather than being a mere technical problem for architecture, thinking and ‘doing’ dis/ability differently turns out be a creative generator for design. It is also a powerful critique of what is assumed ‘normal’, a vital means for troubling everyday design assumptions about space and its occupancy, and an enabling mechanism towards new collective and emergent forms of social, spatial and material equity.

As part of the UCL Knowledge Lab seminar series, this talk is about how bodies come to be articulated and treated differentially in the design of built space.

In collaboration with disabled artists from The DisOrdinary Architecture Project, Jos is exploring ways to critically and creatively rethink how we ‘do’ disability within architecture and design, as well as within society more widely.

The DisOrdinary Architecture Project refuses the simplistic solutions of technical design guidance and regulation as mere add-ons to ‘normal’ design, instead starting from difference and non-normativity.