Architectural Practices and Disabling Design in the Built Environment

In this paper we consider architects' understanding of disability and disabled people's building and design needs in the United Kingdom. We seek to reveal the contrasting ways in which architects define, and design for, disability, the types of competencies that they have acquired to do so, and the range of problematical assumptions and attitudes that they bring to bear upon processes of architectural production and designing for disabled people. In addressing such themes, we divide the paper into three. First, we provide a brief overview of debates concerning architects' relationships with building users, where we seek to qualify and develop the observation by Moore and Bloomer that the attitudes and values of architects is an important site and source of building users' estrangement from the built environment. Second, using data from a postal survey of architectural firms in the United Kingdom, we evaluate architects' understanding of disabled people's building needs and their attitudes and responses to the diverse requirements that disabled people have in seeking to use the built environment. Third, we conclude by considering some of the political and practical transformations which need to occur in order to transform the disablist attitudes, values, and practices of architects and design and development processes.