Four Wheelchair-User Architects

Abstract

It certainly seems like a fortuitous accident that four wheelchair users have ended up studying at the same school of architecture, at almost the same time. Maybe it is even the same kind of twisted fate that has confined us to a wheelchair in the first place, as none of us was born in it.

With different ages, backgrounds, interests and sets of difficulties to master, we committed ourselves to initiate careers in architecture several years ago. Accessibility issues, especially in terms of mobility, have (always) been an intrinsic and fundamental part of our approach to academic projects, and they will most certainly continue to maintain a strong presence in our professional lives.

This book reflects a set of principles and motivations that fuel our daily concerns. First and foremost, it is our desire to introduce people to a wide range of viewpoints, other ways of perceiving the environment in general, and architecture in particular. Furthermore, we aspire to break nonsensical stereotypes, particularly those that claim everything dealing with accessibility and universal design is ugly or sad, or that it only exists to assist a ridiculously small chunk of the population that is (un)fortunately affected by some kind of affliction. In terms of academic training, we’d like to voice our concern that very little is being done to approach architecture through anything other than a pure ocularcentric bias that precludes other basic concepts. If anything, architecture is created by means of and for the entire human body.

Finally, it is also our wish to present our final theses projects, not because they are particularly extraordinary or look especially nice, but because they were conceived in a unique way: they were created with a view to fostering the closest possible relationship between user and designer.