Thirty years on, the A.D.A. has reshaped American architecture and the way designers and the public have come to think about civil rights and the built world. We take for granted the ubiquity of entry ramps, Braille signage, push buttons at front doors, lever handles in lieu of doorknobs, widened public toilets, and warning tiles on street corners and subway platforms. [...] The A.D.A. has baked a more egalitarian aesthetic of forms and spaces into the civic DNA. — The New York Times
Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for The New York Times highlights how public discourse surrounding designing for people with disabilities has changed in the three decades that have passed since the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Highlighting the tensions that exist between terms like "universal" and "inclusive" design, Kimmelman also revisits a recent glowing review he wrote last year of the Steven Holl Architects-designed Hunters Point Library in Queens, the design of which was highlighted by members of the community as being rather inaccessible in terms of its design.
![National Museum of American History Smithsonian Institution](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Photo_of_President_George_H._W._Bush_signing_the_Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_inscribed_to_Justin_Dart,_Jr.,_1990.jpg"){kind=link}
33 Comments
So ADA means that we should ban bike lanes? That seems like a perversion of the intent.
where is it that someone asks to ban bike lanes?
No one, in this article or otherwise, seems to be suggesting that. Where did you pull that absurd conclusion from?
Did you read the article? "All those stairs and tiers made certain areas inaccessible to people in wheelchairs, they pointed out. How uplifting could a public library be if some people — who expected, deserved and needed to use it — felt unwelcome?" (all but the middle two tiers are inaccessible to wheelchairs and the books have been removed).
“Architecture, from Vitruvius through Le Corbusier, has mirrored Western culture, for whom the default user has always been the straight, white, healthy, tall male,”
How do Bike lanes not represent the same logic as the stairway in the Queens Library?
We aren't being consistent. ADA is about equal access, not equal experience. The article is moving towards an equality of experience
It's easy to apply this logic to a celebrated building by a famous architect. Much harder when the scope is your own celebrated urbanism. My question is how does a handicapped person even get to this building in the first place.. no buses, no subway. Only a car (which the urbanists want to ban). Cool, cool. The hypocrisy is easy to spot if you are willing to look.
No handicapped person in their right mind would ever think to move to NYC in the first place.
NYT enjoys the conspicuous social good agenda, but they aren't willing to go deeper into their own hypocrisy. How about contributing more to arch criticism (with accessibility) with your massive budget rather than one building review per 5 years?
So you read the article, skipped all of the thinking, and made a wild accusation lacking in any causal logic. Got it.
https://bit.ly/2ZNNaLk
Do you have a google alert for my comments or something? Creeeeeepy.
Nope and nope.
Also, I've never seen a handicapped bicycle being used ever. And about 95% of the bike riders are healthy white bros or food delivery. Not that I'm against bike lanes, just pointing out the hypocrisy of the NYT urbanism (ban cars, bike lanes and walking for all!) propaganda of the last 10 years
Sorry if i triggered the bike bros
So you have problems with object permanence? If you haven't seen it it does not exist?
Let me know when someone actually uses ADA as a justification for banning bike lanes and I'll take this comment seriously.
Providing ramps is not the same as banning stairs. Certainly you see how this obvious logic extends to bicycles.
I'm looking into it, the banning of bike lanes by any means necessary.
Shall we ban music for a deaf person who will never be able to experience music as a non-deaf person? ADA is not just about wheelchair access. It is not the Architectural Barriers Act. It is more than removing barriers to wheelchairs. The ADA is about the need to accommodate people with physical disabilities and people with other disabilities. Is this website ADA compliant? The idea is to make goods or services accessible to those disabled. The key point is to accommodate. It does not mean the service experience will be equal. A blind client will have difficulty visualizing the building plans proposed by the architect. Not everyone will experience the services provided equally. It is literally impossible. What we can do is better accommodation for those with special accommodation needs. We can make the experience the best we can for all within reason.
Rick, deaf people can experience music.
I didn't write that. Read the first sentence again. All this time.
Fair enough, you're correct that is not what you wrote.
It was just an attention-getter statement.
In Chicago on a Sunday walk by the lake I saw 6 arm powered bikes, they do exist and the basic bike lane infrastructure works just fine for these bikes, folks in racing chairs (the ones with three wheels) and basic power chairs or manual chairs also enjoy bike lanes especially in places where drivers pull up into cross walks at intersections, where there is an abundance of sidewalk furniture for out door dining, trees, E scooters or other obstacles. lately we have been putting a lot of stuff on our sidewalks.
E-Scooters, with the lie that they replace car trips as justification.
always good intentions and then lawyers ruin it for everyone.
You are missing the point of this article. it’s not about ADA but using that to justify something new, called “inclusive design” .... read this: “abiding by the letter of the A.D.A. isn’t the same as internalizing its civil rights goals . . .. That is what still remains for architecture — “to lift itself into the next realm“ . . .
This is what I described above, something nobody agreed to other than a few journalists and dubious academics. If you thought ADA was challenging to meet requirements, imaging what the “next realm” will be — a Marxist utopia of ranch homes, Tesla ubers and costcos
Nope, the Marxist utopia still has poor accessibility...
read the article and your comments, I do find the "universal" vs "inclusive" (means to repair a "disorder" vs including the "other") a bit humorous or a sign of brainwashed academia trickling into journalism trickling into..wait being afronted by reality nonsense. the disappointment of physics and biology.
but I don't understand the negative responses to Chemex here either. and what's with the marxist and then ranch homes? right now, by code, single family, two family, and townhouses (single family) are excluded from ADA as far as I know (I still practice this way). what's annoying in NYC is the ADA applies to privately owned Condos', which is just absurd, if you can afford a $2mil one bedroom you can afford to make it accessible assuming you needed it (which is why many architects lie, because it's just stupid)....
if the debate here is between differing political views - i.e. a democracy means serving the smallest portion of the population over a democracy means serving the majority...like get lives man. NYT is just twitter with fancy language anyway.
or in future there will be no disabled people so who cares...once people accept the laws of physics and biology of course, until then we can "identify" and "flat earth" everythgin
A real Trekkie could correct me on the details but when Patrick Stewart was cast for the role of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: TNG a reporter asked the show's creator Gene Roddenberry about casting Stewart, who is bald, saying that surely at that point in the future there would be a cure for male pattern baldness. Roddenberry responded that at that point in the future we wouldn't care about baldness.
In that vein, I'd suggest that in the future there will still be people who we might consider disabled today ... but at that point in the future people won't care so much as they'll be more accepting of people of all abilities rather than labeling some as "disabled."
Plus my comments on one of the related articles already "proved" there is need for universal accessibility in the future.
points taken, but then the question what if someone can't do something others can? how do you qualify that line and when does it become a public matter like ADA?
If someone can't do something others can, they can't do it. It's not about equalizing everyone's abilities. If a blind person can't see, it's not about giving them 20/20 vision*. Providing wheelchair access to a space that others access via stairs isn't giving the wheelchair user the ability to climb stairs. But it is giving them the opportunity to access that space according to their abilities.
The ADA and the code provisions on accessibility are what they are. For better or worse, that's where we have qualified any line. They're not perfect and should change and evolve. Architects and designers should be able to accommodate those changes and recognize where we might need to go beyond the regulations and code minimums to allow/provide better access.
*Keeping with Star Trek analogies, one of my complaints about the Star Trek universe was giving LaForge sight through his VISOR and later implants ... though I did appreciate that it wasn't perfect sight and the concept was developed into the character that it cause him pain, etc. ... i.e. not a perfect solution for his blindness. It was also discussed that he had certain abilities that others did not because of it. LaForge even refused opportunities to give him 'normal vision' if I recall correctly. So while I think it was lazy of the writers to give him sight, I also applaud them that they did it with some concept that it wasn't really a perfect solution, it allowed him some advantages compared to 'normal vision,' and at times acknowledged that, like Picard's baldness, it didn't need a perfect solution.
To expand on EA's post if I may; the ADA already allows for different abilities. If a building has a space where a differently abled person would have no reason to go because the specific reason that space exists makes it impossible for that person to need to be there, it does not need to be accessible to that person.
to Sneaky's point, designing kids spaces, usually not to code. did a pre-school once and we called it furniture, but we were really just doubling FAR because the kids were that short...I mean I had to blatantly lie about the loft space in a room with 9' ceilings...where are the codes for kids!
I think of ADA vs. barrier free, or 'inclusive' or 'universal' design like LEED vs Net Zero or Passivhaus. ADA is about doing the bare minimum to check boxes, newer philosophies are more about performance, and less prescriptive.
Personally I think that's a step (I mean ramp) in the right direction.
The problem with moving beyond the current ADA and other accessibility requirements we have now to require more if not all newly built housing units to be accessible is it will dramatically increases the size of bathrooms and kitchens in housing units and this can have consequences on affordability. The cost of a new four flat with an elevator to each floor versus just making ground floor unit accessible is huge. Accessible housing is important to include but the cost of making every unit accessible will drive up housing cost and create or exacerbate housing accessibility based on affordability which is already a serious problem. The current accessibility codes are an attempt at a compromise on access and affordability.
Over and OUT
Peter N
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