Universal design

Abstract

Designing for the disabled is about making buildings accessible to and usable by people with disabilities. Universal design is about making buildings safe and convenient for all their users, including people with disabilities. A theme of this book is the similarities and differences of the two, between their correspondences and affinities on the one hand, and their discordancies and diverse methodologies on the other. In 1961, the year after my architectural studies were completed and I had become a registered architect, I was commisioned by the Polio Reseach Fund in conjunction with the Royal Institute of British Architects to undertake a reseach project whose aim would be the production of a book to be called Designing for the Disabled. It was a topic I knew nothing about and one that at the time was nowhere on the agenda of practising architects – the idea that buildings ought as a matter of course to be accessible to people with disabilities was then unheard of. Professionally inexperienced though I was, the credential I had which appealed to those who appointed me was that I was myself a person with a severe physical disability, the consequence of acquiring a polio virus in 1956. First published in 1963 by RIBA Publications, Designing for the Disabled became a standard textbook for practising architects. The second edition came in 1967, and the third, a bulky book of more than 500 pages, in 1976. I was subsequently disinclined to produce a fourth edition, first because it would have been a daunting chore, and second and more importantly, because I was troubled by the ethos that the book reflected, th