A critical and activist movement to shift the way design approaches questions of (dis)ability and understand ways in which designed environments make people disabled—demonstrating how an intersectional disability justice approach to design challenges design norms in a manner which is compatible with, and instructive for, climate-responsive design
Context
Research shows that disabled people are disproportionally affected by climate disasters, and that people living with disabilities are more likely to be living in poverty. Established design paradigms such as inclusive design and Universal Design start from the standpoint that disability itself is the problem, and so aim to adapt existing environments for people with physical and mental impairments. In contrast, the social model of disability reframes issues that disabled people face to show that it is society and the environments themselves that make people disabled: from something as simple as staircase with no ramp, to barriers to communication and attainment as a result of failing to recognise neurodivergence. The term Disability Justice was developed by Patty Berne, Mia Mingus, and Stacey Milburn—three disabled activists of colour in the United States—through conversations over a number of years that evolved into the Disability Justice Framework. Disability Justice is an intersectional framework that understands all bodies as having their own unique strengths and needs, and that all bodies are powerful because of their complexity. Disability Justice links to climate justice, understanding that it is not possible to separate the social, political, and environmental discrimination that disabled people face.
Practice
Within disabled communities there is a huge amount of theoretical and critical material and practice that directly addresses the intersections of climate change in relation to disability justice. Disabled communities are used to constantly dealing with environmental hazards and therefore the challenges that emerge through living with climate change are able to be faced with similar collective interventions, both in terms of a culture of constant adaptation, and in specific technical knowledge.
One example is the self-organised collectives such as the Disability Justice Culture Club (DJCC). Based in Oakland, California, the DJCC is an accessible community house that provides emergency housing for disabled people during climate-induced crises such as wildfires, emergency evacuations and power cuts. Another is the way in which Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha describes the effect of wildfire smoke on north American cities and how there is pre-existing knowledge within the disabled community about how to mitigate the affects of toxic air—for example, knowing which public spaces in the city have air-conditioning and how to build a diy High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) filter.
The Disordinary Architecture Project was started by Zoe Partington and Jos Boys with the aim of initiating a culture shift within design and within society more generally. The project sees the disability/ability binary as a central issue, and that ‘ability (like whiteness or maleness or straightness)’ should not be invisible or assumed. The construction of what is seen as ‘normal’ relates not only to bodies and minds, but also to the built environment and climate.
“We believe that starting from disability has the potential to reveal architecture’s deepest assumptions about what is valued and noticed, and what is marginalized and forgotten, in design and disciplinary practices.”
Boys and Partington believe that starting from disability, allows design to respond to the ‘complex, contradictory and hard-to-meet perceptions and experiences of our many different ways of being in the world.’ The Disordinary Architecture Project’s approach, through challenging norms, thus encourages us to see the world in different ways; this is an essential starting point for climate responsive design. In the same vein, Aimi Hamraie, thinking about Universal Design, describes how current limitations in terms of ‘access to clean air and water, food, parks, and transportation occurs according to histories of racial and economic privilege at the scale of cities and regions.’ A disability justice approach to design intervenes in these limitations and historical exclusions in a manner which is compatible with, and instructive for, climate-responsive design.