Archinect - News

The Hunters Point Library case highlights the ADA's failures to prevent inequality by design

2023-07-24T11:35:00-04:00

More than 30 years ago, the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law, mandating reasonable accommodations and accessibility features for people with disabilities. Yet to this day, ADA noncompliant sidewalks, crosswalks, and public transportation stops permeate U.S. cities from coast to coast.

The plaintiff in the Hunters Point Library suit against Steven Holl — disability advocate Tanya Jackson — is another high-profile case highlighting the effects of racial health inequality in design and the failures of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for Black disabled citizens, 37% of whom are experiencing poverty.

Some critics have begun apologizing for hyping certain flawed aspects of its design. Recently, the LA Times’ Carolina Miranda diagnosed it as “a structure in which architectural gymnastics have elbowed out basic function” after her own timely house call.

New York City sues Steven Holl Architects over inaccessible Hunters Point Library design

2023-05-19T19:04:00-04:00

New York City is suing the architects behind the Hunters Point Library for tens of millions of dollars over portions of the structure not being accessible to people with handicaps, in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act. [...] The city’s lawsuit was filed May 17 in state Supreme Court in Manhattan. The defendants are Steven Holl Architect, PC, aka Steven Holl Architects, and the individuals Steven Holl and Christopher McVoy.

The original lawsuit was brought to Federal court in November 2019 by a local disability advocate named Tanya Jackson. The project debuted just two months prior and drew the immediate ire of critics who were quick to point out the flaws in its $41.5 million non-universal design. Steven Holl Architects senior partner McVoy has defended the project as "incredibly successful" since that time and now faces a total of $10 million in potential damages alongside Holl. Another $20 million could be assessed against the firm depending on the lawsuit’s outcome.

Previously on Archinect: Class action lawsuit filed in Hunters Point Library accessibility dispute

According to the complaint: "As designed and built, the Library failed in multiple ways to comply with the design requirements set forth in the requirements contract and Task Order 1. The areas of noncompliance included several primary design elements of the building, as well as ADA standards for bathroom layout, door clearances, and the li...

Michael Graves Design teams up with CVS to create a more stylish and accessible line of home health care products

2022-02-22T13:26:00-05:00

CVS Pharmacy and Michael Graves Design are now teaming up on a direct-to-market line of home health care products that will build on the legacy of inclusive design beget by its namesake in the inspiring last decade of his life and career.

The initial round of products focuses on bathroom safety and mobility aids and includes a foldable cane, travel walker, shower chair, 3-in-1 commode, and raised toilet seats each based around philosophies of the Design for All movement which the architect helped create.

CVS Health Take Along Folding Cane. Image courtesy Michael Graves Design.

In order to get the best possible input and consumer feedback from users of the products and their caregivers, the firm undertook a comprehensive ethnography study along the east coast that provided extremely valuable insights into a too-often overlooked area of home product design.

CVS Health Raised Toilet Seat. Image courtesy Michael Graves Design.

“This product actually gives people the feeling that, hey, so...

Canada wants to make federally-owned heritage buildings more accessible

2021-12-24T12:07:00-05:00

Inclusive design consultancy Human Space has been commissioned by the Canadian government with the aim of making the country’s federally-owned heritage buildings more accessible. The two-and-a-half-year project will seek to improve accessibility for users with disabilities without compromising the buildings’ heritage value.

The project will begin with an environmental scan of federally-owned heritage buildings as well as an outreach program to establish dialog with disability groups, heritage professionals, and other relevant parties.

Archinect Feature: Unpacking The Spatial Implications Of Architecture's Accessibility Failures

The research will also involve the study of national and global precedents on accessibility guidelines in heritage structures, and a series of on-site workshops with focus groups, including users of mobility devices, and people with hearing or vision difficulties. The design team will then test solutions with user groups and publish a public report includin...

Berkeley CED Professor Emeritus Raymond Lifchez donates $2.5 million for Universal Design-focused endowed professorship

2020-05-21T18:57:00-04:00

University of California, Berkeley College of Environmental Design (CED) Professor Emeritus Raymond Lifchez has donated $2.5 million to the college in order to create a new endowed teaching position focused on universal design.

Previously on Archinect: "Unpacking The Spatial Implications Of Architecture's Accessibility Failures." Image courtesy of Murmurs and Josh Schaedel.

The new Lifchez Professor of Practice in Universal Design position will help bring additional design and pedagogical energies to the topics of accessibility and universal design, two areas that Professor Lifchez has pursued over his 50-year-long career at CED.

According to a news post published by the school, the Professor of Practice in Universal Design will rotate between departments within CED, which include Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, and City and Regional Planning.

A deeper look into #ADAFails and the inaccessibility of common public spaces

2020-02-03T12:31:00-05:00

Ask any disabled person about the gap between the ADA’s aspirations and their hard realities. We are often forced to stop in our tracks and weigh the chances of falling and suffering minor or serious injury against the need to go into a library, store, or post office. But it’s more than that. We believe strongly that we deserve a right to exist in the world. We’re just waiting for the rest of the world to truly believe this, too.

Writing in The Nation, author Elizabeth Guffey reflects on the ongoing accessibility failures that impede the everyday experiences of countless people in the United States despite the fact that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted 30 years ago.

Guffey takes a look into the #ADAFail photo genre that documents common “access fails," or quotidian instances of inaccessible design that making navigating through the country's built environment frustrating, difficult, and often dangerous for people who have disabilities.

One thing you can say about @NCDOT: Their licensed professional engineers spare no expense in addressing the basic needs of people with disabilities along state highways across the Good Roads State. #HoldMyBeer #ADAfail #LawsuitPlease #UncivilEngineering pic.twitter.com/egm6mw6x1p
— Don Kostelec (@KostelecPlan) November 14, 2019

Is providing accessible design a shared responsibility?

2019-12-18T17:00:00-05:00

Nearly thirty years after the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed, accessibility for disabled people both online and in public space remains severely insufficient. New York artist Shannon Finnegan and design historian Aimi Hamraie, who currently resides in Nashville, held a video chat on October 9 to discuss their respective artistic, activist, and historical takes on disability justice.

Aimi Hamraie's 2017 book Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability explores the question of who counts as "everyone" according to architects of the Universal Design movement.

Finnegan's artworks include pieces such as "Museum Benches," benches that are inscribed with: "THIS EXHIBITION HAS ASKED ME TO STAND FOR TOO LONG. SIT IF YOU AGREE." In this article, the pair discuss at length their ideologies around the shared responsibility around access in our society today.

Class action lawsuit filed in Hunters Point Library accessibility dispute

2019-11-26T13:29:00-05:00

New York City-based legal group Disability Rights Advocates (DRA) has filed a class action lawsuit against a collection of public agencies representing the borough of Queens, New York "challenging the inaccessibility" of the new Steven Holl Architects-designed Hunters Point Library, according to a press statement.

A press release announcing the suit reads: "Under longstanding disability rights laws, newly constructed buildings must be made fully accessible to people with disabilities. Yet Hunters Point Library, which is an entirely new $41.5 million building constructed after years of in-depth planning, shockingly excludes persons with mobility disabilities from full and equal access to its services through reliance on stairs and other inaccessible features."

The statement argues that a series of "barriers" to accessibility exist at the library, including:

Three levels within the building are "completely inaccessible to persons with mobility disabilities"
The children’s section inc...

Accessibility failures abound in Los Angeles's public and private realms

2019-10-05T12:00:00-04:00

Yes, messy sidewalks are hard. But so are shops and restaurants with steps at their entrances. So are blocks that lack curb cuts or have ones that are poorly designed. So are broken elevators. So is the fact that in L.A., if you’re a disabled person (which is what Radcliff calls himself rather than a person with a disability), you generally have to spend more on rent, because the properties covered by rent stabilization are older ones less likely to be accessible.

The Los Angeles Times takes a look at how a pervasive lack of universal design across Los Angeles makes daily life nearly impossible for disabled people.

Lovely Hunters Point Library is actually lacking in terms of universal design

2019-10-04T07:00:00-04:00

“I think it looks really beautiful," said Frank Wu, the president of Court Square Civic Association, a group in Long Island City that tries to encourage smart development. [...] “There are a ton of stairs but only a single elevator,” he said, adding that accessibility has long been an issue in Long Island City, which has seen the number of young families with strollers balloon in recent years.

A much-lauded new library in New York City's Long Island City district designed by Steven Holl Architects might have serious shortcomings when it comes to accessibility and universal design.

The library's fiction collections are organized along a set of tiered levels that can only be accessed via staircase. Photo © Steven Holl Architects.

As patrons have flocked to the library, it has been discovered that certain areas are less accessible than others, including the library's fiction aisles, which are set along multiple tiered levels that are only accessible via stairs.

Joe Bachner, a resident who visited the library, told Gothamist, "If you can’t walk, you can’t go through that area."

In order to overcome this situation, Gothamist reports, librarians are available to go up and select books for library patrons, as necessary.

American Society of Landscape Architects publishes guide to universal design

2019-08-21T18:00:00-04:00

If we want everyone to participate in public life, we must design and build an inclusive public realm that is accessible to all. Public life can’t just be available to the abled, young, or healthy. The sizeable global population of people with physical, auditory, or visual disabilities, autism or neurodevelopmental and/or intellectual disabilities, or neuro-cognitive disorders will face greater challenges if we don’t begin to more widely apply universal design principles

The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) has published a guide to universal design meant to set the bar for universal accessibility in the landscape architecture realm beyond the largely quantitative requirements stipulated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

A statement announcing the guide written by Ian Dillon and Jared Green explains: “ADA standards, because of [their] focus on technical aspects of accessibility over experiential quality, often result in spaces that are still very challenging for people with disabilities to access, leaving them physically and mentally disconnected from public life,” adding, “Landscape architects and designers can apply universal design principles to create more inclusive spaces for underserved communities.”

According to the guide, “All public spaces should be physically accessible to everyone, regardless of their physical, cognitive, or mental ability. Specific areas of public spaces shouldn't be designed for people with spe...

OLIN Labs hosts educational series on universal design

2019-08-09T13:30:00-04:00

The series served as an introduction to Universal Design, described the social model versus the medical model of Disability, and shared the specific needs and design strategies to accommodate both the Deaf/HoH as well as the Autistic and Neurodivergent communities. This series initiated a conversation reaching across Disabled communities, and demonstrates that while different Disabled communities’ needs may be different, the design solutions are often incredibly similar.

With the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act approaching, discussions that examine where design and accessibility intersect have increased in frequency.

In June 2019, for example, OLIN Labs' hosted a lecture series covering a range of topics relating to the interconnected issues of inclusion and access.

There was the Intro to Disability and the Built Environment, a lecture by Dr. Victor Pineda, founder and president of WorldENABLED, an educational non-profit that promotes the rights and dignities of persons with disabilities. The lecture asked: "what can we do as landscape architects and planners to design more accessible public places, to better include stakeholders with disabilities in the design process, and to understand how public policy can deeply influence Universal Design."

Another lecture, Design for Autism and Neurodivergence: Shaping the Sensory Landscape by People Lab member, Danielle Toronyi, "introduced designers to the Autistic and Neurodivergent c...

From The Vessel to gallery accessibility, the art world continues to reinforce ableism

2019-08-07T16:14:00-04:00

In 2019, inclusive spaces that are comprised of voices from the neurodiverse and disabled community are still extremely rare. Despite the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 29 years ago, neurodiverse and disabled communities continue to face collective discrimination from failures to accommodate in access, transportation, employment, education, and many other arenas. Unfortunately, the art world is no exception.

Emily Sara, a disabled, interdisciplinary artist and designer, penned an open letter calling on the art world for stronger support of the neurodiverse and disabled communities, whose everyday needs are often overlooked in American society. She names a few examples of how the art world inadvertently reinforces ableism, such as the controversial Vessel, the accessibility of several New York galleries, and the lackluster representation of disabled artists in exhibitions.

“Regarding the art world, navigating and addressing these issues will require taking fundamental steps toward inclusion, from implementing practical solutions to increasing awareness among art institutions and community members,” Emily Sara writes in her letter. “I am therefore calling on galleries, curators, museums, institutions of higher education, artists, and other art institutions: welcoming the neurodiverse and disabled is long overdue.”

Designer creates new accessibility-minded brand of accessories

2019-08-05T20:15:00-04:00

Lucy Jones, founder of FFORA, a company whose "mission statement is simple, the world made accessible to all." After embracing a challenge by one of her professors at Parsons to design something that could change the world, the young designer began to talk to one of her family members who had cerebral palsy.

"This challenged me to better consider the accessibility of my creations and reach out and listen to others’ stories. I spent a year listening to a diverse group of individuals who all had varying needs and desires," he expressed in a Teen Vogue interview. Her inquiry continued to larger collaboration and people with disabilities which informed the production and creation of her FFORA brand.

Jones elaborated further on her future ambitions. "For too long, the disability community has had to reinvent or hack their belongings or surroundings due to lack of available products. We believe everyone deserves to see themselves reflected in the products that they use every day, and I ...