Episode 3 - Universal Design and…. Disabled Creativity

What can be learnt from diverse disabled people’s expertise and creativity in making more inclusive products, buildings and environments?

The last episode in the series of Universal Design and…focuses on the knowledge and experience that disabled people already have through lives of negotiating inaccessible spaces and products. We also talk about the importance of making space for disabled people to become designers in their own right, as well as being involved in design and educational processes. 

Our first guest Else Skjold – fashion researcher and educator at the Royal Danish Academy - highlights her work with wardrobe research and how including disabled bodies can open new ways of thinking and doing fashion.

Focusing on the Small pleasures in everyday life, disabled researcher and activist Peter Gråbøl Holm and head of the Cluster for Spatial Inclusion at the Danish Royal Academy Masashi Kajita talks about their work visualising disabled individuals’ particular relationships with places and exploring alternative ways of thinking about disability that include joy and beauty.

Lastly, UK-based blind architectural student Poppy Levison talks about her experience studying in a visual dominated field and introduces other disability-led ways of understanding and designing space. 

We hope that sharing these experiences of rethinking disability in education and practice can help others and open up innovative, creative and critical ways of including disability as integral to the processes od design education and practice. 

The podcast Universal Design And… is made by The Royal Danish Academy, celebrating the guest professorship of Jos Boys from 2022-2025 and hosted by the architect and activist herself. The professorship was funded by Bevica Foundation. The podcast was produced with the help of Rakkerpak Productions.

Participants

Dr. Jos Boys (Guest professor at the Royal Danish Academy 2022-25 and  co-director of The Disordinary Architecture Project), Else Skjold (fashion researcher, designer and educator), Masashi Kajita (Research cluster lead, architect and educator, Royal Danish Academy), Peter Gråbøl Holm (disabled researcher and activist, Knowledge Centre on Disability), Poppy Levison (UK-based blind architectural student).

English transcription:

EPISODE THREE: Universal Design and … Disabled Creativity

Jos Boys: In Episode Three, Universal Design and Disabled Creativity, I hope to show how starting from disabled people's expertise and creativity can really benefit the design of products, buildings and environments. This is because disabled people already have such a lot of knowledge gained by negotiating inaccessible designs and have often made inventive adaptations and improvements that non-disabled designers and others can learn from. We will hear about disabled fashion designers, from tutors at the academy who work with them, and from the team exploring small pleasures as a way of thinking about designing, not just for functional access, but also valuing design as central to the joy and comfort of all humans. And finally, we'll talk to a blind architectural student about the importance of enabling more disabled people to become designers and architects, as well as the challenges she and other disabled creatives continue to face. So first up with me today is Else. 

Else, could you please briefly introduce yourself and then tell us a little bit about how you've been working with disabled creatives to challenge some of the assumptions in the fashion industry about what bodies should be like?

Else Skjold:  Yes - so where to start - I think I want to maybe start with the beginning with my PhD work where I was part of developing something called wardrobe research where we basically try to turn the logic on the opposite. So normally fashion is about aspiring to some ideal and in this it has become quite extreme in the fashion world so that this ideal is nearly non-obtainable for most people and so in this wardrobe with research, we try to start with the individual person and try to discover again who that is and what kind of dreams, realities, practices they have that kind of inform their clothing choices. And this type of research, or you can say perception on fashion, is the core of the then Master Program I founded in 2020 called Fashion, Clothing and Textiles New Landscapes for Change. So bringing in students who all dream about maybe being a celebrity designer, designing for this ideal person with model body features and so-called ideal meshes. And trying to open up their eyes that we are all dressed bodies and we would all actually deeply appreciate being seen and designed for, is kind of my starting point. 

And then I cannot say that I have worked a lot with disability, but I have kind of, I could see it as kind of an opportunity to awaken some sensitivity around, you can say that the core of fashion is that it's a relation between a body and a garment that's always central. So, I had this opportunity in the autumn of ‘23 to have a small sum of funding [from Bevica Foundation] to make a workshop with our students and it was called Dressing the Body. So what I did was to invite Annette Norring, who is a tailor, who is herself in a wheelchair and she is designing for many disabled people. And I also invited Nanna [Martinussen] who has a small company called We Do Fashion who is very into made to measure and constructing garments with a nice fit, not especially for a particular group but for everyone. And then we had invited a group of young people from something called SUMH [Danish Association for Youth with Disabilities], a Danish organization for young people – with a lot of challenges they have. Maybe they have some diagnosis with anxiety or they cannot see or they cannot hear or other things. And we were so fortunate they could come and take part. Because what I wanted to discuss with my students and with the guests we had, was the things we can then learn from people with disabilities, that is really something we are all concerned with. We just rarely actually notice it.

 We rarely notice how much [clothing] affects our well-being or our self-perception. 

Where is the body, you know, tight-fitting, not working out, enhancing features we like. How does it feel to be inside of it because fashion has become, sadly I think, a lot about the look so there's been this huge discussion in research on fashion on how we try to open up our senses so that fashion again becomes something about all the five senses - like the olfactory sense the hearing sense - because we use all of our senses when we are clothed, right? And listening to these young people that, for example, had extreme sensitivity of skin or had, could not see so had quite detailed requirements for something very practical on how to getting dressed in the morning, or going to the restroom, or other things, I think it just enhanced my students' awareness; firstly, of how much can they affect, how much can they actually help people, but also that this is something we are all concerned with.

And that right now, most of the fashion industry is catering to a very, very limited group of people, actually. And all the rest of us are basically being ignored and not designed for. So I think this workshop became like a very nice key to open up a lot of discussions that are quite general. So it was like, yeah, having a ‘loudspeaker’.

Jos: And it is, it's that thing that rather than starting from those ideal bodies, exactly as you talked about, the kind of model body, that if you start from disabled and diverse bodies that it is a creative generator it is actually something that really produces new ideas that you might not otherwise have in terms of how you might create a garment. I mean I guess for me what's interesting in relationship to fashion - and in a way to architecture - is like there's a version of that which is being a dressmaker and working directly with individuals and working to their bodies and their particular sensitivities, as you said. Have you done any work thinking about how that can be applied to kind of the wider industry in terms of, because how do you, yeah, what are ways of scaling up?

Else: Yes, so I can start with the first part, which is the tailor who works one-to-one with the person, which was Annette Norring, who took part of the workshop, I think it was quite fascinating how she told that she typically would buy some second-hand garments, as her clients were not typically super affluent. So buy some oversized second-hand garments because she needed extra fabric, because the shape of the garment had to be quite different from people not sitting in a wheelchair. So, there would be parts that would be in completely other shapes, which was in itself super fascinating.

So that's in the one-to-one. There's quite a lot of interesting research taking place at design schools at the moment for how to make, you can say, kind of a standardized diversity, to say there are different body standards instead of now, where we only make for one standard. So just to make it clear for the listener, what takes place now is that there is a standard measure, which is typically for a European size 36 - for a body that has very particular proportions and all dress, all fashion, most fashion companies, they use these measures for everything they do. And when it's more than a size 36, they just scale the same proportions up, which everyone knows will not work, but still this is what is being done. And what is the reason for this? This is because we have cut out costs for making garments and for product development of garments for three, four decades now. So everything where we take into consideration, for example, how does a body develop with age? What are the typical, like there are some standard differences, and we used to have that, we used to have something called a triangle body or an H-shaped body or a pear-shaped body or an apple-shaped body. And then there would be particular styles targeted towards that body type, so you knew as a customer, okay, I have this body type so you knew as a customer then, this is targeted for me but it was not tailor-made clothing right so we used to have a lot of these little differences. And they have just slowly disappeared because of price. So, we're discussing now can some kind of pattern construction software maybe assist us in this? Can we make some design guides for how to make kind of standard differences? So, for example, a brand could cater to particular types of bodies. And of course, then we're also investigating the service sector for clothing that used to be completely normal, that we have adjustment tailors, we had repair tailors, we had tailors who were re-dyeing the clothing to refresh the look, and all of that has also disappeared as garments became so cheap we just discard them. And we know for a fact that the number one factor defining how much will we use this garment is fit. So, this is our number one problem is the lack of, you could say actually within the system how it's geared now, there's no room for product development. And all of that knowledge we used to have about this, we have cut it away or we have placed it in the hands of people very far away from a country like Denmark. So, we outsource basically all of our clothing production in Denmark. We have basically nothing left. So, it's a system problem. It’s not that designers want to be evil or punish people who are most of us. It's simply because of the economic model,  that it has been run to a complete extreme in our sector that directly affects the well-being of people when they walk around, when they try on something in the shop or at home and they feel wrong. It's because the clothing is wrong. So that feeling of being left out or wrong that I guess would be a discussion when you are having then an extra layer of challenge… 

Jos: ..Yes, yes. We call it misfitting. We've been calling it misfitting in other episodes..

Else: .. Yes, misfitting. And here you have kind of a whole sector and a whole industry that is making most of us misfitting. And this is the core of the research I started with my PhD, that we are all the misfitting, we are fashion's others. We are being othered - both by the fashion media, by the whole kind of what we call the fashion system. So, it's not just designers, it's also, it's every single link in the value chain that is doing this. And because in a sense I would say that both us who wear clothing and the designers are kind of being taken hostage in all of this and now we need strategies for how to liberate it and empower it again.

Jos: Yeah, and I think there are many more overlaps in a way than I expected, in relationship to how people are thinking about architecture and the built environment, in relationship to disability. Because it's discussing how you get variety, at least some variety, you can't like meet [everyone’s needs] unless you have like a completely individualized tailoring system you can't get -and nobody can afford that - you can't get like everybody suited but you could have more variety; and you also need to have possibilities for adaption, for repair, for change at that kind of granular level like, that you have a way as you say, working with second-hand clothes that you that you can adapt them and the same with we've been talking about buildings that, you know, why do we keep demolishing them and building new? There's that same pressure as there is in fashion for kind of driving forward all the time..

Else: … and you call like fashion is the body buildings, so to speak..

Jos: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's very connected. I guess one more thing I just wanted to talk about, because we've talked a lot about having a way of enabling more fit, a variety of fit, you know, not just a single-minded fit, but I guess there's also, in relationship to thinking about different kinds of bodies and particularly thinking about disability, there's a real tendency just to think about function. Like, you know, yes, there's a zip that enables you to reach some part of your body, but I think also there's still such interesting things around style and around pleasure. So, I don't know if you could talk a little bit about that too? 

Else: I would love to! So, one thing that is happening at the moment is that there seems to be this idea that sustainability is linked to some particular aesthetics, which is called timeless, and it has some very particular colours and very particular materials. So, it's being treated like yet another trend. When we look at what do people actually like and love and wear a lot, there's no particular aesthetics. It's the aesthetics that you like. You belong to some kind of grouping. We also, there's a very nice researcher, Jennifer Craik, called Clothing Our Cultural Skin [1994] and this is to be taken very, very seriously. So if you want something that is good and long lasting, there's both the functionality, there's the emotional aspects, like does it link with who you think you are, how you would like to be met, how you like to see yourself? So, this act of getting dressed in the morning is really, you know, dressing your body in culture and going out and saying, here I am, and I want to be recognized. And therefore, I mean, nobody likes - there's nothing more horrifying than wearing something aesthetically that is not, you know, in resonance with who you feel you are. This is why in prisons we take away the individual garment from people and we take away this layer and that's a punishment. So, it just says something about how serious it actually is and how important it is for us.

Jos: Yeah, but also, I think for a lot of disabled people, especially if they have a visible disability, they're not even seen as a person. So, it's like a double whammy. You don't even have that degree of choice. People will see you, they'll see the wheelchair, but they won't see you. So that's not, you know, I know a lot of disabled people who are of course very interested in fashion and dress very fashionably, but the agency you have to project the sort of person you want to be seen as is reduced, by other people's opinions and assumptions about you. 

Else: Yes, and then I think what I have seen is that some then take the power and are very, very creative with the styling or making themselves, but of course not everyone has the skills or simply the need for making, crafting, which is what it is. So, this was being invisible out, but what I'm just trying to say is this is symptomatic for a lot, a lot of people. I mean, it's being considered abnormal to even be a size European 44. Then you are abnormal. You're not a normal person then. You don't have a normal body. You cannot buy clothing in a normal shop because you're an extreme body. And that says it all.

Jos: Yeah, no, I think that's such a, that's kind of like a really good...

Else: You can have a tent… 

Jos: Yeah, and that's it….

Else: Or something in stretch and that's it. Yeah.

Jos: Yes. And that is, that's kind of, I think, a really great point to end on because it is that, you know, we've been talking particularly about disabled people, but when you're thinking about fashion, it is so limited in who it imagines has a right to be in the world and a right to express themselves through clothes, that it's like spreading that kind of, like realising how blurred those boundaries are really in many ways. So, thank you, thank you very much, Else.

Else: Thank you.

Jos: It was so good to talk to Else about the critical and creative implications of designing for a multiplicity of bodies and minds. And that's both as a way of challenging existing systems of production but also bringing joy into diverse people's lives. Now, for a change, we're going to move to a different setting. So now I'm joined by Masa and Peter, and I'm going to ask them to introduce themselves. Masa…

Masa Kajita: Hi. Yes, my name is Masashi Kajita. I'm a Japanese architect trained in the UK. I'm an associate professor at the Royal Danish Academy School of Architecture. I'm currently leading a research cluster called Spatial Inclusion, also the Reading Master Programme called Spatial Design. 

Jos: Fantastic. And Peter, tell us why you're with us?

Peter Graesboll Holm: Yeah, so I'm with you because I work with disability in a lot of ways, both professionally and politically and existentially, I think, and maybe poetically sometimes as well. And so I touch bases with disability in a lot of ways. I live with one. I have cerebral palsy. You know, medically speaking, it's all these things, but it also means so much more and other than that. And right now I'm working at this little consultant house, [Jacob] Nossell & Co, where we do a lot of interesting projects related to disability and in all kinds of ways. So I think I have a lot to say at least on the topic. I think that's maybe why I'm here. 

Jos: Absolutely, yeah. And I think, I mean, the project I was hoping you'd both talk about because I know you've been it doing together is called Small Pleasures. So maybe you could just again, - I'm going to look at you first Masa - can you just sort of outline what that project's about? 

Masa: It started from our common critique on normative approaches that assume disabled people as one abstract category of same characteristics. So, we wanted to emphasise more nuanced understanding of disability and we saw that it is important to shift the focus more to these enabling dimensions, or to we call it as a small pleasures. And first and it started from Jacob, who couldn't be here, but we asked our colleague and friend Jacob Nossell about small pleasures in his everyday life and he said that such a thing doesn't exist. He said that he spent most of his energy on planning and concerning, about not falling and so forth. and he said that there is no space for pleasures, and then we continued talking. And one point I asked him, and he makes this sound of like, ahhh, you know, like the sound we make when we feel good, like when we enter into a hot bath or when we drink coffee together. And so, this project we called, I mean, we used to call it as Places of Ahhh! And anyway, so this place is a word, now we call it places and small pleasures. This short film showcases for individuals, like happiness, delight, and the unique relationship with the places through which we wish not only to understand how the environment relates to feeling of pleasure, but also to explore different, alternative ways of thinking about disability. So, we are interested in the different variety of embodied and highly subjective understanding of architectural experience, because we think that this in-depth understanding and engagement with individuals' bodily experience give us insight, not only for us but also, we talked about the architect and designer, for challenging this normative design practice. If that makes sense.

Jos: Yeah. Peter, are there things you'd like to add to that?

Peter: I was especially struck when we were in the process of making the short film - to do it we did these interviews with the different individuals. and I was part of being in the room and part of asking the questions and it was almost overwhelming to me how intimate it was. I think we started out having the individuals to just look at the camera for I think it was 60 seconds and we had I think - and this was not my idea we had an amazing, amazing cinematographer [Louise McLaughlin] with us there  - but this this silence and just being in the body was like a portal to I mean for me somehow a really foreign realm for a lot of people in non-normative bodies or in different bodies. And it really struck me how precious it felt talking to these people about their pleasures and how unusual it is to even imagine that as something relevant to disability. It was mind-boggling and mind-blowing. Yeah.

Jos: Yeah and it's funny because what we know is that when disabled people are asked - in relationship to the built environment anyway - about their experiences it's quite often in a very mechanical way. It's not that the functional access doesn’t need to be dealt with, but it is like you're treated as if you're just a kind of a blob that goes from one place to another with no feelings and no imagination and no personality, really. And it often seems very reactive. It's like you get shown a building plan, for example, and asked, you know, does it work for you? Which is, it just seems very emptied out of anything kind of very important. So, I think what's so lovely about what you've been doing here is it's one of the ways we might think about disability and work with disabled people that doesn't do that. I don't know Masa what you...

Masa: No, I think this that 60 seconds and you know that gave not only to them, but for us to contemplate and reflect isn't it I mean because that was because of they start thinking about their own very private and then subjective experience and then they needed to really reflect and then such a way of engaging about, or at least thinking about pleasure, and then they start thinking about why I felt in that way and where was it and then those you know we can see that the how they start actually reflecting and then that was one of the very first but in strongest moment during the process. Yeah, that's true, that was very strong. 

Peter: I think as well, like when you start, if you want to ask about pleasure or if you want to help people open up - because I think it is an opening up - because I think it is something that is vulnerable and that we, for good reason, I think all of us, but especially if you have experienced a lot of pain in your body, if you have experienced a lot of grief in your body if you have experienced loss of function, there's a lot of things that you lock away possibly - that's not the experience for everyone, but for a lot of us, because the body is a big part in enabling us to feel pleasure and I think that it can be shut down. It’s also about reconnecting with the body, and so my point was that when you want to ask about pleasure, it is not a question that can be answered right away. It is more like a gentle exploration, or coming to safety together, before you can even begin to articulate anything that makes sense on a verbal or some rational level. So, I think it's not just question-answer there's a whole explorative part that's really important and that the silence was part of that for sure.

 Jos: And then the film itself, I think you've shown it in various places, tell me a little bit more about that?

Peter: We showed it in the film festival at CPH:DOX [(Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival] it was an amazing experience. I think it was inside this cube where the film was being shown on all the walls. So, it was like sitting inside the short film. And it was looking in awe at all these big faces and all the facial expressions. And the smallness of the small pleasures was easier to spot because everything is so big. So, it's like you zoom in. And it was wonderful to be there with the people that helped create it, I think.

Masa: We could share that with all the people who took part. And then also the Copenhagen Architecture Forum, one of the events we showcased our film. And then we used it in various events to talk about different ways of talking about disability as that was our intention, because we didn't want to only focus in about disabling aspect of architecture and building environment, more about enabling aspect. And then we thought, yeah, I mean, one thing still that what we learned was talking about pleasure and I thought pleasure is very easy to discuss and talk and share, but it's very private. And there's many other issues that took time to unfold and then discuss. And many of those moments we actually, especially for me, like a non-disabled person, teaching myself each time, actually not slowing down, but I need to be cautious about the different reasons that people have. So, we just need to constantly adjust and remind each other, like maybe we shouldn't assume this, we should spend more time on this, we should reflect on this. And then that actually took a very long time to make such a short film. 

Jos: But I also think that just feels like such an important thing about that - you have to have the space, you have to have that sense you have to make something that feels like a safe place to be and that does allow time for processing and reflection; and isn't just yeah as you say like it's not tick box, not question and answer, it's much deeper and richer than that. And I suppose I wondered about what, out of that experience, out of what you've learned from that, what you would like to do next, what do you feel are the next steps in developing this work?

Masa: My view is that we like to continue, obviously, continue working on this aspect. This time that was a first attempt, and then we took the film to talking about the city of Copenhagen. But then we were thinking to moving more towards actually to move to domestic spaces of those individuals, which is because we wanted to relate it to more small pleasures in the everyday. Do you know like a much, well not necessarily more subtle or more small, but then more embedded in everyday acts. So, we are constantly try to seek opportunity to raise funding, as usual. And then we talk quite a lot, Peter and I especially, we talk a lot about pleasures and enjoyment. So, it's kind of life work and continuing. 

Peter: I feel the same. I think that since we started working on the project, as a wheelchair user I have noticed more about the environments that I inhabit or don't. And those small pleasures there. And I think it brings a lot to, it brings something to my life. And I feel very, it feels really purposeful and wonderful to start opening up spaces where we can talk about pleasure. Just the act of bringing that to the talk and to the community that the communities I'm part of is, it's like I suddenly realized that, oh, there's this piece or this part of my life that I haven't really cultivated. And it's been there all along, but it's actually possible to start exploring. What is it, for example, about driving a wheelchair that opens up the world to me, right, but like because for me the wheelchair was always like sort of the negative of walking, it was like not walking. Yeah, it was always lesser than and that was what I was told implicitly, and it's been so wonderful as part of this as well to re-inhabit my wheelchair, I think. So, and just like feeling when I take one of these, I put my hands on my on the wheels and then I move.

When I do that on asphalt, it's such a different experience. It's like I'm carried along. Right? And I start having these thoughts like, well, driving a wheelchair is actually more similar to swimming than it is to walking in terms of movement. because you propel yourself. Starting to think about all these small moments of wonderfulness or like awe and enjoyment, I am actually, this has actually given to me, I can actually inhabit, I can actually experience the world from a wheelchair.  It may sound really banal but it's really not. And it's not something to be taken for granted. And if you have not met places and people and environments that help you be curious about what it means to be in a wheelchair, for example, you might never realize that part of you. You might never realize the joy and the wonderfulness of driving. And that's so horrible, and this is just a wheelchair. Right? There are so many different ways of experiencing, of enjoying the world and I hope that this project and whatever we do can help, can help grow that and help people grow that you know, I think it's very important.

Jos: It's fantastic and I don't think it's banal at all. I think it's really, just so interesting that, I mean one of the things that we've always tried to do in The DisOrdinary Architecture Project - where we do bring disabled artists and designers into built environment professions and education - is to get the non-disabled people to pay attention to disabled people's expertise and creativity. But it's also you know, in a way you're flipping that over, it’s kind of part of the same thing. Which is to say, for disabled people with diverse impairments and diverse personalities, it's like what you need is that there isn't space often. Like the stereotypes are so strong about that a wheelchair is a problem, it's somehow a block rather than a hugely important freeing mobility space. And that just means that that is something that also needs to happen; that disabled people who want to, we need to find space and time to have those kinds of conversations and engagements that you're talking about across, you know, all sorts of different experiences. Thank you. Thank you both so much for sharing all that. Really lovely to talk to you both. Thank you. 

Peter: Thank you. 

Masa: Thank you, Jos. 

Jos: Another of the things Masa and I have discussed often is how architecture and design practice tends to focus on disabled people only as passive users of products and buildings, on people out there, rather than about how we need more disabled students, teachers and practitioners, that is, as in the room, as creative producers. And about the extent to which design, education and practice could be less disabling for people who don't fit the norms. For me, we are more likely to make truly accessible buildings and spaces when diverse disabled people are valued as a normal part of the design disciplines.

 I'm now joined by Poppy Levison, a blind architectural student currently studying at the Royal College of Art in London. So welcome Poppy and if you could please briefly introduce yourself and then tell us a little of your experience of being a disabled woman trying to break into mainstream design practice.

Poppy Levison:  Hi, I'm Poppy Levison. I first met Jos in 2019 before I was yet to embark on my architecture education when I took part in the Architecture Beyond Sight project. And I've been working with DisOrdinary [Architecture} ever since then. I have done my undergraduate part one architecture qualification at Central Saint Martins and I'm currently in my first year of my master's in architecture at the Royal College of Art. In between those two courses, I have also worked in practice and I taught at the London School of Architecture for two years. I think the thing that I would most sort of comment on when I talk about being a disabled person in architecture is kind of like living a double life. I have this one life where I'll be working with DisOrdinary and I'll be hanging out with wonderful disabled people and we have a culture and we have a language and we have words that we use and then I'll go back to normal life and you know I can't even really say that I'm tired because of the culture of architecture let alone say to someone ‘oh I'm out of spoons today’ and you have this moment when you realize that you're so detached from this kind of culture? But I think whilst that's like an interesting position to be in as an individual, I think this kind of illustrates where architecture is at with disability, that you know so often when you're either a student or you're working in education and talking about disability you end up spending like half of your time just bringing people kind of up to speed with where the conversation is at? Before you can ever do anything that feels sort of progressive and beyond? Like we're talking a bit about universal design and even getting people to the point of being interested in universal design is so much work, that then when you say to people, you know that's a concept from like the 80s and 90s and actually like we want to be pushing on past that, that's when it takes so much work. And people don't even realize how little they know about it, is the other thing. But I do think that, you know, education environments can also be a really good place for that. I think it's harder as a student, which is something I'm currently experiencing of myself because of these like power dynamics, you know, it's unusual as a student to know more about a subject than the tutors that you're working with, but then when you're a tutor there's this like incredible opportunity. And there's a moment that I always come back to which was in one of my first year’s teaching it wasn't even a student from my group but a student who was working with a group about disability actually ended up leaving a crit in tears which is horrible and I hate that a student had to go through that. But she left because she was so infuriated by the sort of reductive view of disability that the critics had. And she had moved so beyond this really limited perspective that she was infuriated and distraught that there was such a narrow view. But what I find so wonderful about that is that probably like three or four months before that she would have had the view that they had. And I think that just shows the power that education can have that someone in such a short space of time had taken these huge leaps in their view on disability and now was just so infuriated by the sort of standard perspective.

Jos: Yeah, I do. I think it's so interesting because even, you know, I also had similar experiences in relationship to architectural education and practice, and there's a kind of like even when people are thinking about committing to the idea of having more disabled people involved, it's like then it's not that that means that you have to change the way that architecture is taught or practiced. Whereas that's, you know, immediately what you're saying, like the first thing that comes up is there's this obsessive work culture? Yeah? Like production - you know produce-produce-produce culture and then there's a lot of quite complicated power dynamics that often can be quite discriminatory to lots of different non-normative peoples and I know that you've experienced your fair share of all of that. And I suppose what's interesting to me, because it doesn't feel so different to when I was an architecture student in the 1970s. Some things have changed, but some things somehow seem very embedded and I'm not asking you to be the person who somehow solves this problem, but I'm really interested in how, what are the sorts of things that do enable that to shift? Is it, you know, as you say, like the student who stomped out, it's like younger generations coming through who do know more, who are much more aware?

Poppy: Yeah, I think it's a difficult, it's a difficult question, but I do think there is some progress being made. I think the way that younger people in the industry are becoming mobilised, particularly when it comes to the profession of architecture, is really positive. Calling out of really toxic workplace practices, like working so much overtime that you're actually being paid less than the minimum wage, or jobs that require you to - despite a part two placement as we have in the UK which is like a sort of graduate position being intended as a graduate position  - they'll be advertised asking for two to three years experience but if you were following the professional guidance you should never have a part two with two to three years experience because they should have progressed. And I think people are a lot less tolerant of this kind of workplace practices now and I'm really hopeful that that will start moving across into education. I think there's a big issue in architecture education where there's almost like a sort of generational trauma cycle where a lot of old school tutors had this view of like I'll just keep bullying the students, I'll just keep knocking them back and then they'll just make work, or they'll sort of single swim approach. They'll just drop out and then they must have never been any good anyway. And you see this pattern with tutors that had all had the same tutor and they'll all go on to teach in the same way and I do think that's a really hard cycle to break. But I do think there are some really positive examples of it being done well and I always like to give a shout out to my third year undergraduate tutor Carlotta Novella who's part of public works [architects practice] and she just had the most incredible understanding of people and how to bring the best out in people. And you know there were students who could so easily have dropped out because of other things happening in their lives and yet she had this like honestly mystical way of bringing them in and making sure they'd turn up and producing work and sort of very gently manipulating them into doing a crit that they never would have turned up to. But she made it so that the bar for entry was so comfortable for them that they were able to show up and I think we need to start … it's that cumulative effect in that she was my tutor and I take those practices on, in the same way that so many tutors take on the negative practices that they had. So, I hope that like with a bit of time and more people coming in with these like much more positive pedagogical practices, it'll then be a bit of a cumulative effect the other way as well.

Jos: Yeah, that's really important and interesting, I think. And I do, I mean, it feels to me that it's something that relates very much to being disabled because it's not that you're less capable of being a really good designer, but it is that you will, you know, that there are access needs and one may get, will get more tired, as you say, not have enough spoons or have other, have to deal with other aspects of life that non-disabled people don't have to. So for me, it's about it, it really, it kind of echoes or resonates or ripples - I don't know what the word is - across many more different people in that it's that assumption that somehow if you show weakness or if you take time to think about things, or if you're tentative in your proposals, that that is a sign that you shouldn't be there rather than potentially a sign that in the long term you're going to be a really good designer because you're thinking very creatively and very open-mindedly about things.

Poppy: Yeah. I also think ego is such a big part of that. I think some of the best designers are people that don't have that huge ego, particularly when it pertains to design, because they're willing to listen to people and they're willing to compromise ,and they're willing to consider different opinions and try and make everything work together rather than this kind of very ego-driven architecture of the individual making all the decisions. And so I think by knocking out these people that are not quite as confident or as ego-driven, by nurturing those people you're going to get architects and designers that are wanting to engage with lots of different voices.

Jos: Yes. I keep finding I'm asking you really almost impossible or difficult questions because there are things we talk about ,and we talk about in The DisOrdinary Architecture Project, which are like how we move this forward - in all sorts of different ways, small scale ways and bigger ways, and I guess I'm quite interested in if you have some key thoughts about what you want to say to non-disabled people - there's plenty of really good people out there  - but you know the ones who are perhaps stuck in their ways, what sorts of things do they need to think about non-disabled architectural professionals or educators or students?

Poppy: Yeah, I think it's a common question. It's kind of how we frame things to get as many people on board as possible. I'm quite lucky that I've kind of worked across a wide range of fields within the creative industries. So, I've worked in architecture, I've worked in art, I've worked in film. And a lot of this has been generally related to disability and access. And it's interesting, like the different things that resonate with different people. I think a good way of framing it sometimes is, is saying to people that like, you should all hope to one day be disabled.  It generally means quickly in a very bad accident, because if you want to live a long life that's generally going to mean disability at some point. That might be a temporary disability like a broken leg, or you know even being pregnant viewing that as a kind of temporary disability, because your way of existing in the world does not conform to the sort of norm. But also aging. You, if you want to live these long lives that most people want to live until they're 80, 90, 100, part of that you're going to be disabled. And so, you know, from a purely selfish perspective, design for yourself, because - and this is one of the things I found working in film is you've got increasingly large audiences who are losing their hearing. And then you suddenly take them to a showing where it's entirely captioned and they're like oh that was great I just understood everything that was happening and sometimes won't even clock that it's because there were captions on screen. I think that's the thing is that so many of those people could just stop going to the cinema or stop engaging with communities that surround that culture of film. And a lot of those people might have one day been quite stuck in the mud about like oh I don't like captions, they interfere with the visual aesthetic of a film; but I always think, well, would you rather see the film with the captions on, or would you rather not see the film at all? And I think the same can be said for architecture. You know, being disabled is not a bad thing. Being disabled can be great. It can be lovely. It can also just be a neutral experience. It's just a different way of being, but the bit that makes disability difficult and like a crappy experience at times, is when you're confronted by these barriers. And you know, so many people in the conventional architecture sphere, just see it as something that is so detached from them. But when you think, oh, well, when you're older, or if you suddenly became disabled, would you want to engage with these spaces? Would you want to quit your job? Would you want to still be able to teach and work in architecture? And so, I think giving people an almost selfish perspective of it and questioning what they would want to happen to themselves might help bring people on board sometimes.

Jos: Yep, that's really great. And before we end, I just wanted to cover one other area that we haven't talked about, which is about your own creative practice, actually, I know you've been thinking about blind space and I feel like one of the things that came out of the Architecture Beyond Sight project that you mentioned - which was a kind of short course for blind and partially sighted people interested in architecture  - was that it was also about finding new design methods. It wasn't just somehow enabling people to fit into conventional architectural practice but that we could actually begin to move beyond, towards much less visually oriented design methods. So, it would be great to hear you talk a little bit about that.

Poppy: Yeah, it's a really knotty subject this, because architecture is so visual. And even the way people think about space within architecture is so visual. Me and Mandy Redvers-Rowe, who is also blind and works with DisOrdinary, did a workshop with some architects and as a warm-up we did this non-visual exercise and they have to put their hand in a bag and feel an object and describe it to the person next to them. And just like as if it was all perfectly planned, pretty much every single person in the entire group, the minute they put their hand in the bag asked what colour it was…

Jos: …well even had an idea about what colour it was, they told us what colour it was, yeah …

Poppy: And I think that was such a such a moment of going we've got so far to go about where people are at with this! Like the complete centring of visual processing and visual methods of working and visual understanding of the world. So, a lot of the work that I've been doing is as much as anything focused on the way that blind people think about space. So, thinking about the very different ways that blind people hold a concept of space in their heads rather than being able to look for something. You know I often get told I have a very good memory for where things are but it's because I can't just look across the room and tell you where it is and see it. So I have to, when I was next to it, remember that it was there so we have these like very complex maps in our head. But there's so many strategies it's that thing you know you meet one blind person, you've met one blind person, you've not met, you don't know what blindness is. But the thing that is still very challenging when working in a sort of conventional architecture school setting is pushing the sort of modes of representation. You know, like I would love to be working through tactile drawings and exploring that, but in the way that we have a standard language for architecture drawings that are visual - like if I draw some stairs or a ramp, you know that they're stairs or a ramp because we have these conventions. We don't have those conventions when it comes to tactile drawing. We don't have conventional ways of making tactile drawings either. So, when you're looking to create these different ways of producing work, there's no standards to fall back on, which means every time you introduce a tactile drawing to a blind person it requires the explanation by generally a sighted person which again perpetuates these kind of power dynamics that you can't independently access these drawings in the way that a sighted person can look at any plan anywhere in the world and pretty much understand it. And then on the other hand you know I'm presenting work to an entirely sighted audience and as much as I would kind of love to just produce an entire braille portfolio at the end of the year and go ‘there you go!’ there's also a question of marking and fitting within marking schemes and learning outcomes and stuff. 

But I think working with working with DisOrdinary and working at Architecture Beyond Sight - both the year that I was a participant and when I came back as a tutor - I find it just fascinating the different ways that [blind and partially sighted] people produce things differently you know the ways people model things or write about things and describe things. Zoe Partington who's your co-founder of DisOrdinary is such a wonderful writer about concepts, as is Mandy [Redvers-Rowe], but then other people think entirely through modelling things with paper and card or movement as well, like ways of using your body. So, I think there's so much room for exploration, and I think there's so much richness. There's just not enough disabled people exploring these things yet.

Jos: Yeah, I absolutely agree, because I feel like we should see it's, this is all so creative, the creative possibilities, the kind of creative generative possibilities of thinking first of all about the incredibly diverse ways in which blind and partially sighted people map space, they're very spatial but it's also very sensory. The way in which we might have forms of representation that are centred on touch or smell or audio description. These all should be seen as incredibly beautiful ways to move forward. But as you say, you know, there are also conventions in many ways, there often need to be conventions and that you have to, so you're working in what is a very, into a really complicated space.

Poppy: I think one thing I would say as well, when you're convincing people of why they should engage with disability beyond just, you know, being a decent human that thinks all people should have access to things! Other than that, so often in art, culture, architecture people are looking for something new. And you hear so often since post-modernism there's no such thing as new anymore, everything's referencing something and everything's kind of referencing something, but disability has not been explored. We have barely scratched the surface of the potential and the creative potential of disability. And so actually, like, if you want to do something new, if you want to do something people haven't seen before, and if you want to break ground and be the first to do something, you know, engage with disability, which like, who doesn't want to be groundbreaking?

Jos: That's a great thought to end with. Thank you so much, Poppy. Thanks for this conversation.

Poppy: Thank you.

Jos: In this final episode, Universal Design and … Disabled Creativity, I wanted to highlight just how important it is to involve the knowledge and experience of diverse disabled people themselves and to suggest ways in which this is possible. It's been fantastic hearing from Else about how including disabled bodies can open up new ways of thinking and doing fashion. From Masa and Peter about making visible the small pleasures of living with a different body or mind. And from Poppy about breaking new ground as a disabled designer. Many, many thanks to Else, Masa, Peter and Poppy for talking to me today and to the Royal Danish Academy and the Bevica Foundation for supporting this project. These podcasts only cover a small part of the many fantastic things going on around disability access and inclusion at the Academy, in Copenhagen and elsewhere. But we hope that sharing and reflecting on how our particular experiences of rethinking disability in education and practice can help other students, educators and practitioners to also open up innovative, creative and critical ways of including disability and access in what they do.

I'm Jos Boys, guest professor at the Royal Danish Academy and co-director of The DisOrdinary Architecture Project. This podcast was produced by Rakkerpak Productions. Thank you so much for listening.

Danish transcription 

OBS: Denne oversættelse er lavet ved hjælp af kunstig intelligens, og gennemlæst efterfølgende.

Universal Design and … Disabled Creativity

Universelt Design og… handicap som en kreativ kraft - unikke perspektiver og erfaringer

Jos Boys: I Episode tre, Universal Design and…. Disabled Creativity, håber jeg at vise, hvordan det at tage udgangspunkt i personer med funktionsnedsættelsers ekspertise og kreativitet virkelig kan gavne designet af produkter, bygninger og miljøer. Dette skyldes, at personer med funktionsnedsættelse allerede besidder omfattende viden, opnået gennem deres erfaringer med utilgængelige designløsninger, og ofte har foretaget opfindsomme tilpasninger og forbedringer, som ikke-handicappede designere og andre kan lære af. Vi vil høre om modedesignere med funktionsnedsættelse og fra undervisere på Det Kongelige Akademi, som arbejder med dem. Vi skal høre fra et team der undersøger Small pleasures [små nydelser], som er en tilgang til design, ikke kun med fokus på funktionel tilgængelighed, men også med en værdsættelse af design som en central kilde til glæde og komfort for alle mennesker. Til sidst taler vi med en blind arkitektstuderende om vigtigheden af at give flere handicappede mulighed for at blive designere og arkitekter, samt de udfordringer hun og andre kreative med handicap fortsat står overfor. Men først i dag har jeg Else med mig. Else, vil du introducere dig selv kort og derefter fortælle lidt om, hvordan du har arbejdet med kreative med handicap, og med at udfordre nogle af de antagelser, der findes i modeindustrien om, hvordan kroppe bør være?

Else Skjold: Ja – hvor skal jeg begynde – jeg tror, jeg vil starte med begyndelsen, med mit ph.d.-arbejde, hvor jeg var med til at udvikle noget, vi kaldte wardrobe research [garderobe forskning], hvor vi grundlæggende forsøger at vende logikken på hovedet. Normalt handler mode om at stræbe efter et ideal, og i modeverdenen er dette ideal blevet så ekstremt, at det nærmest er uopnåeligt for de fleste mennesker. I wardrobe research forsøger vi i stedet at tage udgangspunkt i det enkelte individ og genopdage, hvem denne person er, og hvilke drømme, realiteter og praksisser der informerer deres valg af beklædning. Denne type forskning – eller man kan sige denne opfattelse af mode – er kernen i det kandidatprogram, jeg grundlagde i 2020, Fashion, Clothing and Textiles: New Landscapes for Change. Her optager vi studerende, som måske drømmer om at blive berømte designere og designe til denne idealiserede person med modelkropsmål og såkaldte perfekte proportioner. Og så forsøge at åbne deres øjne for, at vi alle er klædte kroppe, og at vi alle faktisk dybt ville værdsætte at blive set og designet til.

Jeg kan ikke sige, at jeg har arbejdet meget med handicap, men jeg har set det som en mulighed for at vække en form for sensitivitet omkring det, man kan kalde modeverdenens kerne, nemlig relationen mellem krop og beklædning, som altid er central. I efteråret ’23 fik jeg en mindre bevilling [fra Bevica Fonden] til at afholde en workshop med vores studerende, som vi kaldte Dressing the Body [Beklæde kroppen]. Her inviterede jeg Annette Norring, som er skrædder, og som selv bruger kørestol og designer for mange mennesker med funktionsnedsættelser. Jeg inviterede også Nanna [Martinussen], som har en lille virksomhed kaldet We Do Fashion [Vi Laver Mode], og som arbejder meget med skræddersyning og konstruktion af tøj med god pasform, ikke specifikt til en bestemt gruppe, men til alle. Derudover havde vi inviteret en gruppe unge fra SUMH [Dansk Ungdoms Fællesråd for Handicap], en dansk organisation for unge med forskellige udfordringer – nogle har diagnoser som angst, nogle kan ikke se, nogle kan ikke høre, og andre har andre udfordringer. Vi var så heldige, at de kunne komme og deltage. Det, jeg ønskede at diskutere med mine studerende og de inviterede gæster, var, hvad vi kan lære af mennesker med handicap – noget, som faktisk vedrører os alle, men som vi sjældent lægger mærke til. Vi bemærker sjældent, hvor meget [beklædning] påvirker vores velvære og vores selvopfattelse. Hvor sidder tøjet på kroppen? Er det stramt, ubehageligt, fremhæver det træk, vi kan lide? Hvordan føles det at være inde i det? Mode er desværre blevet meget fokuseret på udseende, og der har været en stor diskussion i modeforskningen om, hvordan vi kan åbne sanserne op, så mode igen bliver noget, der involverer alle fem sanser, som lugtesansen, høresansen, fordi vi bruger alle vores sanser, når vi er klædt, ikke? At lytte til disse unge mennesker, som for eksempel havde ekstrem hudsensitivitet eller ikke kunne se og derfor havde meget detaljerede krav til praktiske aspekter som at klæde sig om morgenen eller gå på toilettet, tror jeg virkelig skærpede mine studerendes opmærksomhed. For det første: hvor meget de faktisk kan påvirke, hvor meget de kan hjælpe mennesker. Men også: at dette er noget, vi alle er berørt af.

Og at modeindustrien i dag faktisk henvender sig til en meget, meget begrænset gruppe mennesker. Alle vi andre bliver i bund og grund ignoreret og ikke designet til. Så jeg tror, denne workshop blev en rigtig god nøgle til at åbne op for mange generelle diskussioner. Det var som at få en slags ‘højttaler’.

Jos Boys: Og det er netop det, i stedet for at tage udgangspunkt i de idealiserede kroppe, præcis som du beskrev, den slags modelkrop, så kan startpunktet være den handicappede og mangfoldige krop som kreativ drivkraft. Det er faktisk noget, der genererer nye idéer, som man ellers ikke ville have fået, når det gælder, hvordan man kan skabe et beklædningsstykke. For mig er det interessant i forhold til mode, og på en måde også i arkitektur, at der findes en version af dette, som handler om at være skrædder og arbejde direkte med individer og deres kroppe og særlige sensitivitet, som du nævnte. Har du arbejdet med, hvordan denne tilgang ja anvendes bredere i industrien? For hvordan kan man, ja, hvordan kan man skalere det op? 

Else Skjold: Ja, så jeg kan starte med den første del, som handler om skrædderen, som arbejder én-til-én med personen, det var Annette Norring, som deltog i workshoppen. Jeg synes, det var ret fascinerende, hvordan hun fortalte, at hun typisk ville købe noget brugt tøj, da hendes klienter som regel ikke havde særlig mange økonomiske ressourcer. Hun købte store størrelser genbrugstøj, fordi hun havde brug for ekstra stof, da tøjets form skulle være helt anderledes end for personer, der ikke sidder i kørestol. Der ville være dele af tøjet, som skulle have helt andre former, og det var i sig selv meget fascinerende.

Så det er den individuelle tilgang, som foregår i øjeblikket og en del interessant forskning på designskoler omkring, hvordan man kan skabe en form for standardiseret diversitet, altså at der findes forskellige kropsstandarder, i stedet for den nuværende praksis, hvor vi kun designer til én standard. For at gøre det klart for lytteren er det, der sker nu, er, at der findes én standardmåling, som typisk svarer til en europæisk størrelse 36, for en krop med meget specifikke proportioner, og al beklædning, det meste af modeindustrien, bruger disse mål til alt, de laver. Og når det er større end størrelse 36, skalerer man blot de samme proportioner op, hvilket alle ved ikke fungerer, men det er stadig sådan, det bliver gjort.

Og hvorfor er det sådan? Det skyldes, at vi har skåret på omkostningerne til produktion og produktudvikling af tøj gennem de sidste tre-fire årtier. Så alt det, hvor vi tager hensyn til, hvordan en krop udvikler sig med alderen, hvad der er typiske forskelle, er noget vi plejede at have. Vi havde noget, der hed trekantet krop, H-formet krop, pæreformet krop, æbleformet krop. Og så var der særlige styles, der var målrettet den kropsform, så man som kunde vidste: “Okay, jeg har denne kropsform,” og så vidste man, at tøjet var målrettet én, men det var ikke skræddersyet tøj. Vi havde altså tidligere mange af disse små forskelle. Og de er langsomt forsvundet på grund af pris.

Så nu diskuterer vi, om en form for mønsterkonstruktionssoftware måske kan hjælpe os med dette. Kan vi lave nogle designguides til, hvordan man kan skabe standardiserede forskelligheder? Så en brand for eksempel kunne henvende sig til bestemte typer kroppe. Og selvfølgelig undersøger vi også serviceområdet inden for beklædning, som tidligere var helt normalt, vi havde tilpasningsskræddere, reparationsskræddere, skræddere der farvede tøjet om for at give det nyt liv, og alt dette er også forsvundet, fordi tøjet er blevet så billigt, at vi bare smider det ud.

Og vi ved med sikkerhed, at den vigtigste faktor for, hvor meget vi bruger et stykke tøj, er pasformen. Så det er vores største problem, manglen på, man kan faktisk sige, at der inden for det nuværende system ikke er plads til produktudvikling. Og al den viden, vi tidligere havde om dette, har vi skåret væk, eller placeret i hænderne på folk meget langt væk fra et land som Danmark. Vi har i praksis outsourcet hele vores tøjproduktion i Danmark. Der er stort set intet tilbage. Så det er et systemproblem. Det er ikke fordi designere ønsker at være onde eller straffe folk, som jo er de fleste af os. Det skyldes simpelthen den økonomiske model, som er blevet drevet til det ekstreme i vores sektor, og som direkte påvirker menneskers velvære, når de går rundt, prøver noget på i en butik eller derhjemme og føler sig forkerte. Det er fordi tøjet er forkert. Så den følelse af at være udenfor eller forkert, det er nok en diskussion, man har, når man har et ekstra lag af udfordringer…

Jos Boys: Ja, ja. Vi kalder det misfitting. Vi har kaldt det misfitting i andre episoder…

Else Skjold: Ja, misfitting. Og her har du faktisk en hel sektor og en hel industri, der får de fleste af os til at misfitte. Og det er kernen i den forskning, jeg begyndte med i min ph.d. at vi alle er misfitting, vi er modeverdenens andre. Vi bliver gjort til andre, både af modemagasinerne og af hele det, vi kalder modesystemet. Så det er ikke kun designerne, det er hvert eneste led i værdikæden, der bidrager til dette. I den forstand vil jeg sige, at både vi, der bærer tøjet, og designerne, på en måde bliver taget som gidsler i det hele. Nu har vi brug for strategier til at frigøre og styrke det igen.

Jos Boys: Ja, og jeg synes faktisk, der er langt flere overlap, end jeg havde forventet, når det gælder, hvordan folk tænker om arkitektur og det byggede miljø i relation til handicap. For det handler om, hvordan man skaber variation, i det mindste en vis variation. Man kan jo ikke imødekomme [alles behov], medmindre man har et fuldstændigt individualiseret skræddersystem, og det har ingen råd til. Man kan ikke få tøj, der passer til alle, men man kunne have mere variation. Og man har også brug for muligheder for tilpasning, reparation og forandring på det mere detaljerede niveau, som du siger, når man arbejder med genbrugstøj, som kan tilpasses. Og det samme gælder bygninger, vi har talt om, hvorfor vi hele tiden river dem ned og bygger nyt. Der er det samme pres som i modeverdenen, hvor man hele tiden skal fremad…

Else Skjold: … og du kalder det, at mode er kroppens bygninger, så at sige. 

Jos Boys: Ja, præcis. Det hænger meget sammen. Der er en ting mere, som jeg gerne vil tale om, for vi har talt meget om, hvordan man kan skabe mere pasform, mere variation i pasform, ikke bare én ensrettet pasform, men jeg tror også, at når man tænker på forskellige typer kroppe, og især i forhold til handicap, så er der en tendens til kun at tænke på funktion. Altså at der er en lynlås, der gør det muligt at nå en bestemt del af kroppen, men jeg synes også, der er så mange interessante aspekter omkring stil og omkring nydelse. Så jeg ved ikke, om du kunne sige lidt om det også?

Else Skjold: Det vil jeg meget gerne! En ting, der sker lige nu, er at der synes at være en forestilling om, at bæredygtighed er knyttet til en bestemt æstetik, som kaldes tidløs, og som har nogle meget specifikke farver og materialer. Så det bliver behandlet som endnu en trend. Men når vi ser på, hvad folk faktisk kan lide, elsker og bruger meget, så findes der ikke en bestemt æstetik. Det er den æstetik, du selv kan lide. Du tilhører en form for gruppe. Der er også en meget interessant forsker, Jennifer Craik, som har skrevet Clothing Our Cultural Skin [1994], og det skal tages meget, meget alvorligt. Hvis man vil skabe noget, der er godt og langtidsholdbart, handler det både om funktionalitet og om de følelsesmæssige aspekter, altså, hænger det sammen med, hvem du opfatter dig selv som, hvordan du gerne vil mødes af andre, hvordan du gerne vil se dig selv?

Så denne handling, at klæde sig om morgenen, er virkelig en måde at iklæde sin krop kultur og gå ud og sige: “Her er jeg, og jeg ønsker at blive genkendt”. Derfor mener jeg, at der er intet mere skræmmende end at bære noget æstetisk, som ikke er i resonans med den, du føler, at du er. Det er derfor, man i fængsler tager det individuelle tøj fra folk, man fjerner dette lag, og det er en straf. Det siger noget om, hvor alvorligt det faktisk er, og hvor vigtigt det er for os.

Jos Boys: Ja, og jeg tror også, at for mange mennesker med funktionsnedsættelser, især hvis det er synligt, bliver ikke engang set som personer. Så det er en dobbelt udfordring. Du har ikke engang den grad af valgfrihed. Folk ser dig, de ser kørestolen, men de ser ikke dig. Så det er ikke… Jeg kender mange mennesker med funktionsnedsættelser, som selvfølgelig er meget interesserede i mode og klæder sig meget moderigtigt, men den handlekraft, man har til at projicere den person, man gerne vil ses som, bliver reduceret af andres meninger og antagelser om én.

Else Skjold: Ja, og det jeg har set er, at nogle så tager magten og er meget, meget kreative med styling eller med at lave ting selv, men selvfølgelig har ikke alle evnerne eller behovet for at lave håndarbejde, hvilket det jo er. Så det her med at være usynlig bliver brudt, men det jeg prøver at sige er, at det er symptomatisk for rigtig, rigtig mange mennesker. Altså, det bliver betragtet som unormalt bare at være en størrelse europæisk 44. Så er du unormal. Du er ikke en normal person. Du har ikke en normal krop. Du kan ikke købe tøj i en normal butik, fordi du har en ekstrem krop. Og det siger det hele.

Jos Boys: Ja, nej, jeg synes bare at, det er virkelig en god…

Else Skjold: Du kan få et telt…

Jos Boys: Ja, og det er dét…

Else Skjold: Eller noget i stræk i, og det er det. Ja.

Jos Boys: Ja, og det synes jeg, er et rigtig godt sted at slutte, fordi vi har talt særligt om mennesker med funktionsnedsættelser, men når man tænker på mode, er det så begrænset, hvem den forestiller sig har ret til at være i verden og ret til at udtrykke sig gennem tøj. Det handler om at sprede den erkendelse, at grænserne faktisk er meget mere flydende, end vi tror. Så tusind tak, Else.

Else Skjold: Tak.

Jos Boys: Det var virkelig godt at tale med Else om de kritiske og kreative perspektiver ved at designe til en mangfoldighed af kroppe og sind. Og det handler både om at udfordre eksisterende produktionssystemer, men også om at bringe glæde ind i forskellige menneskers liv. Nu skifter vi scene og bevæger os over i en anden kontekst. Jeg har nu Masa og Peter med mig, og jeg vil bede dem om at præsentere sig selv. Masa…

Masashi Kajita: Hej. Ja, mit navn er Masashi Kajita. Jeg er japansk arkitekt, uddannet i Storbritannien. Jeg er lektor ved Det Kongelige Akademi på Arkitektskolen. Jeg leder i øjeblikket en forskningsgruppe kaldet Spatial Inclusion [Rumlig inklusion], og også kandidatprogrammet Spatial Design [Rumligt design].

Jos Boys: Fantastisk. Og Peter, fortæl os, hvorfor du er med?

Peter Graesbøll Holm: Ja, så jeg er med, fordi jeg arbejder med handicap på mange måder, både professionelt, politisk, eksistentielt og måske også poetisk indimellem. Så jeg berører funktionsnedsættelser fra mange vinkler. Jeg lever med en funktionsnedsættelse. Jeg har cerebral parese. Medicinsk set er det alt muligt, men det betyder også meget mere og noget andet end det. Lige nu arbejder jeg i et lille konsulenthus, [Jacob] Nossell & Co, hvor vi laver en masse spændende projekter relateret til handicap, på alle mulige måder. Så jeg tror, jeg har en del at sige om emnet. Det er nok derfor, jeg er her.

Jos Boys: Absolut, ja. Jeg tænker, det projekt, jeg håbede, I begge ville tale om – fordi jeg ved, I har arbejdet på det sammen – hedder Small Pleasures [Små nydelser]. Måske kunne I kort fortælle, hvad projektet handler om? Jeg kigger først på dig, Masa, kan du fortælle hvad projektet går ud på?

Masashi Kajita: Det startede med vores fælles kritik af normative tilgange, som antager, at mennesker med handicap udgør én abstrakt kategori med ens karakteristika. Vi ønskede at fremhæve en mere nuanceret forståelse af handicap, og vi så, at det var vigtigt at flytte fokus hen imod de positive dimensioner, som vi kalder Small pleasures. Det begyndte faktisk med Jacob, som ikke kunne være her i dag, men vi spurgte vores kollega og ven Jacob Nossell om Small pleasures i hans hverdag, og han sagde, at sådan noget ikke eksisterer. Han fortalte, at han bruger det meste af sin energi på planlægning og bekymringer, om ikke at falde og så videre, og at der ikke er plads til nydelse. Men vi fortsatte samtalen. På et tidspunkt spurgte jeg ham, og han lavede den der lyd, “ahhh” – du ved, den lyd vi laver, når noget føles godt, som når vi går ned i et varmt bad eller drikker kaffe sammen. Derfor kaldte vi projektet Places of Ahhh! i starten. Nu kalder vi det Places and Small Pleasures.

Denne korte film viser individuelle oplevelser af glæde, velbehag og den unikke relation til steder, og gennem det ønsker vi ikke kun at forstå, hvordan miljøet relaterer sig til følelsen af nydelse, men også at udforske alternative måder at tænke om handicap på. Vi er interesserede i den mangfoldighed af kropslige og dybt subjektive forståelser af arkitektonisk erfaring, fordi vi mener, at denne dybdegående indsigt i individers kropslige oplevelser giver os viden – ikke kun til os selv, men også til arkitekter og designere – til at udfordre den normative designpraksis. Giver det mening?

Jos Boys: Ja. Peter, er der noget, du gerne vil tilføje?

Peter: Jeg blev særligt berørt, da vi var i gang med at lave kortfilmen. Vi lavede disse interviews med de forskellige personer, og jeg var med i rummet og deltog i at stille spørgsmål, og det var næsten overvældende for mig, hvor intimt det var. Jeg tror, vi startede med at lade personerne blot kigge ind i kameraet i, jeg tror det var 60 sekunder – det var ikke min idé, vi havde en fantastisk, virkelig fantastisk filmfotograf [Louise McLaughlin] med os – men denne stilhed og blot at være i kroppen var som en portal til, for mig, en virkelig fremmed verden for mange mennesker i ikke-normative kroppe eller i anderledes kroppe. Og det slog mig virkelig, hvor dyrebart det føltes at tale med disse mennesker om deres nydelser, og hvor usædvanligt det er overhovedet at forestille sig det som noget relevant i forhold til handicap. Det var tankevækkende og overvældende. Ja.

Jos: Ja, og det er interessant, for det vi ved er, at når handicappede mennesker bliver spurgt – i relation til det byggede miljø i hvert fald – om deres oplevelser, så sker det ofte på en meget mekanisk måde. Det er ikke fordi den funktionelle adgang ikke skal håndteres, men det er som om man bliver behandlet som en slags klump, der bevæger sig fra et sted til et andet uden følelser, uden fantasi og uden personlighed, egentlig. Og det virker ofte meget reaktivt. Det er som om man får vist en bygningstegning, for eksempel, og bliver spurgt, fungerer det for dig? Hvilket virker helt tømt for noget virkelig vigtigt. Så jeg synes, det der er så fint ved det, I har gjort her, er, at det er en måde at tænke om handicap og arbejde med funktionsnedsættelser hos mennesker, som ikke gør det. Jeg ved ikke, Masa, hvad du...

Masashi: Nej, jeg synes, de der 60 sekunder også gav os mulighed for at beskue og reflektere, ikke sandt? For de begyndte at tænke over deres egen meget private og subjektive oplevelser, og så måtte de virkelig reflektere. Det var en måde at engagere sig i, eller i det mindste tænke over, nydelse. Og så begyndte de at tænke over, hvorfor følte jeg sådan, og hvor var det? Og så kunne vi se, hvordan de begyndte at reflektere, og det var en af de allerførste, men stærkeste øjeblikke i processen. Ja, det er rigtigt, det var meget stærkt.

Peter: Jeg tror også, at når man begynder at spørge ind til nydelse, eller hvis man vil hjælpe folk med at åbne op – for jeg tror, det handler om at åbne op, fordi det er noget sårbart, og som vi, med god grund, tror jeg, alle sammen, men især hvis man har oplevet meget smerte i kroppen, hvis man har oplevet sorg i kroppen, hvis man har oplevet tab af funktion – der er mange ting, man måske lukker af for. Det er ikke oplevelsen for alle, men for mange af os, fordi kroppen er en stor del af det, der gør os i stand til at føle nydelse, og jeg tror, det kan blive lukket ned. Det handler også om at genoprette forbindelsen til kroppen. Så min pointe er, at når man vil spørge ind til nydelse, er det ikke et spørgsmål, der kan besvares med det samme. Det er mere som en blid udforskning, eller en fælles bevægelse mod tryghed, før man overhovedet kan begynde at formulere noget, der giver mening på et verbalt eller rationelt plan. Så jeg synes, det handler ikke bare om spørgsmål og svar, der er en hel udforskende del, som er virkelig vigtig, og stilheden var helt klart en del af det.

Jos: Og så selve filmen som du har vist den forskellige steder. Fortæl mig lidt mere om det?

Peter: Vi viste den på filmfestivalen CPH:DOX [Københavns dokumentarfilm festival] det var en fantastisk oplevelse. Jeg tror, det var inde i en kube, hvor filmen blev vist på alle væggene. Så det var som at sidde inde i kortfilmen. Det var som at betragte med ærefrygt alle disse store ansigter og alle ansigtsudtryk. Og de små nydelser var lettere at få øje på, fordi alting var så stort. Så det er som at zoome ind. Det var vidunderligt at være der sammen med de mennesker, der havde været med til at skabe den, synes jeg.

Masashi: Vi kunne dele det med alle de mennesker, der havde deltaget. Og så også ved Copenhagen Architecture Forum [Københavns Arkitektur Forum], havde også en begivenhed hvor vi fremviste filmen. Vi brugte den ved forskellige arrangementer til at tale om alternative måder at tale om handicap på, for det var vores intention, fordi vi ikke kun ønskede at fokusere på de begrænsende aspekter ved arkitektur og det byggede miljø, men mere på de muliggørende aspekter. Så vi tænkte én ting vi stadig har lært, var at tale om nydelse, og jeg troede, at nydelse var meget let at diskutere og tale om og dele, men det er meget privat. Der er mange andre spørgsmål, som tog tid at udfolde og diskutere. Og mange af de øjeblikke var faktisk – især for mig, som ikke-funktionsnedsat person – en slags undervisning af mig selv. Faktisk ikke at sænke tempoet, men at jeg skal være opmærksom på de forskellige grunde, folk har. Så vi skal hele tiden justere og minde hinanden om, at måske bør vi ikke antage dette, vi bør bruge mere tid på dette, vi bør reflektere over dette. Det tog faktisk meget lang tid at lave en så kort film.

Jos: Men jeg synes også, det føles som noget virkelig vigtigt ved det. Man skal have pladsen, man skal have den fornemmelse, man skal skabe noget, der føles som et trygt sted at være, og som giver tid til bearbejdning og refleksion. Ja som du siger, ikke en tjekliste, ikke spørgsmål og svar, det er meget dybere og rigere end det, og jeg tænkte på, hvad du, ud fra den oplevelse og det, I har lært, gerne vil gøre som det næste? Hvad føler du er de næste skridt i udviklingen af dette arbejde?

Masashi: Min opfattelse er, at vi gerne vil fortsætte, selvfølgelig, fortsætte arbejdet med dette aspekt. Denne gang var det et første forsøg, og vi brugte filmen til at tale om byen København, men så begyndte vi at tænke på at bevæge os mere hen imod faktisk at gå ind i de enkeltes hjemlige rum, fordi vi ønskede at relatere det til de små nydelser i hverdagen. Du ved, noget meget – ikke nødvendigvis mere subtilt eller mindre – men mere indlejret i daglige handlinger. Så vi forsøger hele tiden at finde muligheder for at rejse midler, som sædvanligt, og så taler vi en del, især Peter og jeg, vi taler meget om nydelse og glæde. Det er en slags livsarbejde og noget, som fortsætter.

Peter: Jeg har det på samme måde. Jeg syntes at siden vi begyndte at arbejde på projektet, har jeg som kørestolsbruger lagt mere mærke til de miljøer, jeg befinder mig i, eller ikke befinder mig i, og de små nydelser der.  Jeg synes at, det bringer meget med sig, og det bringer noget til mit liv. Det føles virkelig meningsfuldt og vidunderligt at begynde at åbne op for et rum, hvor vi kan tale om nydelse. Bare det at bringe det ind i samtalen og ind i de fællesskaber, som jeg er en del af, det er som om jeg pludselig indser, at der er en del af mit liv, som jeg egentlig ikke har dyrket. Den har været der hele tiden, men det er faktisk muligt at begynde at udforske den. Hvordan er det for eksempel ved at køre i kørestol? Der åbner verden for mig. For mig har kørestolen altid været en slags negativ version af at gå, altså det var som ikke at gå. Den var altid mindre værd, og det var det, jeg fik fortalt implicit. Det har været så vidunderligt, som en del af dette, at genindtage min kørestol, syntes jeg. Bare det at mærke, når jeg lægger hænderne på hjulene og så bevæger mig. Når jeg gør det på asfalt, er det en helt anden oplevelse. Det er som om jeg bliver båret af sted. Og jeg begynder at få disse tanker som: "Jamen, at køre i kørestol er faktisk mere som at svømme end som at gå, når det kommer til bevægelse," fordi man driver sig selv frem. At begynde at tænke over alle disse små vidunderlige og glædesfyldte øjeblikke. Det er faktisk noget, jeg har fået. Jeg kan faktisk indtage kørestolen og opleve verden derfra. Det lyder måske banalt, men det er det virkelig ikke. Det er ikke noget, man skal tage for givet, og hvis man ikke har mødt steder, mennesker og miljøer, der hjælper en med at være nysgerrig på, hvad det vil sige for eksempel at være i en kørestol, så opdager man måske aldrig den del af sig selv. Man opdager måske aldrig glæden og det vidunderlige ved at køre, og det er så sørgeligt – og det er bare en kørestol, ikke? Der er så mange forskellige måder at opleve og nyde verden på, og jeg håber, at dette projekt og hvad end vi gør, kan hjælpe med at fremme det og hjælpe folk med at udvikle det. Jeg synes, det er meget vigtigt.

Jos: Det er fantastisk, og jeg synes slet ikke, det er banalt. Jeg synes, det er virkelig interessant, altså, en af de ting, vi altid har forsøgt at gøre i The DisOrdinary Architecture Project –  hvor vi bringer kunstnere og designere med funktionsnedsættelser ind i fagområder og uddannelser inden for det byggede miljø – er at få ikke-handicappede mennesker til at lægge mærke til handicappedes ekspertise og kreativitet. På en måde vender du det om, det er en del af det samme. Det vil sige, for mennesker med forskellige funktionsnedsættelser og forskellige personligheder, er det som om der ofte ikke er plads. Stereotyperne er så stærke, som at en kørestol er et problem, en slags blokering, snarere end et enormt vigtigt og frigørende mobilitetsrum. Det betyder bare, at der er noget, der også skal ske, at personer med funktionsnedsættelse, og som ønsker det, skal have mulighed for at have den slags samtaler og engagementer, som du taler om, på tværs af alle mulige forskellige erfaringer. Tak. Tusind tak til jer begge for at dele alt det. Det har været virkelig dejligt at tale med jer begge. Tak.

Peter: Tak.

Masashi: Tak, Jos.

Jos: En anden ting, som Masa og jeg ofte har diskuteret, er hvordan arkitektur- og designpraksis har tendens til kun at fokusere på personer med funktionsnedsættelse som passive brugere af produkter og bygninger, som mennesker derude snarere end at se på, hvordan vi har brug for flere studerende, undervisere og praktikere med funktionsnedsættelse til at være til stede i rummet som kreative producenter. Samt hvor vigtigt det er, at design, uddannelse og praksis kunne være mindre begrænsende for mennesker, der ikke passer ind i normerne. For mig er vi langt mere tilbøjelige til at skabe virkelig tilgængelige bygninger og rum, når forskellige personer med funktionsnedsættelser værdsættes som en normal del af designfagene.

Jeg har nu Poppy Levison med mig, en blind arkitektstuderende, som i øjeblikket studerer ved Royal College of Art i London. Velkommen, Poppy, og hvis du vil starte med kort at præsentere dig selv og derefter fortælle lidt om dine erfaringer som kvinde med funktionsnedsættelse, der forsøger at bryde igennem i den etablerede designpraksis.

Poppy Levison: Hej, jeg hedder Poppy Levison. Jeg mødte Jos første gang i 2019, før jeg overhovedet var begyndt på min arkitekturuddannelse, da jeg deltog i Architecture Beyond Sight-projektet [Arkitektur ud over synet], og jeg har arbejdet sammen med DisOrdinary [Architecture] lige siden. Jeg har taget min bacheloruddannelse i arkitektur på Central Saint Martins, og jeg er i øjeblikket på første år af min kandidatuddannelse i arkitektur på Royal College of Art. Mellem de to uddannelser har jeg også arbejdet i praksis og undervist på London School of Architecture i to år. Jeg tror, det jeg mest vil kommentere på, når jeg taler om at være en person med funktionsnedsættelse i arkitektur, er, at det føles som at leve et dobbeltliv. Jeg har dette ene liv, hvor jeg arbejder med DisOrdinary og omgås vidunderlige mennesker med funktionsnedsættelser – vi har en kultur, vi har et sprog, vi har ord, vi bruger – og så vender jeg tilbage til det "normale" liv, og jeg kan nærmest ikke engang sige, at jeg er træt, på grund af arkitekturkulturen, for slet ikke at tale om at sige til nogen ”Jeg har ikke flere skeer i dag". Så har man et øjeblik, hvor man indser, hvor afkoblet man er fra den kultur.

Jeg synes, selvom det er en interessant position at være i som individ, så illustrerer det også, hvordan arkitekturen befinder sig i forhold til handicap. Ofte når man enten er studerende eller arbejder med undervisning og taler om handicap, ender man med at bruge halvdelen af tiden på bare at få folk op på niveau med, hvor samtalen er henne før man overhovedet kan gøre noget, som føles progressivt eller nytænkende. Vi taler lidt om universelt design, og bare det at få folk til at interessere sig for universelt design kræver så meget arbejde. Når man så siger til folk, at det er et koncept fra 1980’erne og 1990’erne, og at vi faktisk gerne vil videre derfra, så kræver det endnu mere arbejde. Folk er ofte ikke engang klar over, hvor lidt de ved om det.

Men jeg tror, at uddannelsesmiljøer også kan være et rigtig godt sted for den slags samtaler. Jeg synes, det er sværere som studerende, hvilket jeg selv oplever lige nu, på grund af magtdynamikkerne. Det er usædvanligt som studerende at vide mere om et emne end de undervisere, man arbejder med, og som underviser kan det ses som en god mulighed. Der var et øjeblik, jeg altid vender tilbage til. Det var i mit første undervisningsår, og det var ikke engang en studerende fra min egen gruppe, men en studerende, der arbejdede med en gruppe om handicap, som faktisk endte med at forlade en kritiksession i tårer, hvilket er forfærdeligt, og jeg hader, at en studerende skulle gennemgå det. Hun gik, fordi hun var så frustreret over det reducerende syn på handicap, som kritikerne havde. Hun var kommet så langt ud over dette begrænsede perspektiv, at hun blev rasende og fortvivlet over, hvor snæversynet de var.

Det jeg finder så vidunderligt ved det, er, at hun sandsynligvis tre eller fire måneder tidligere selv ville have haft det samme syn, som kritikerne havde, og jeg synes, det viser hvor stor kraft uddannelse kan have, at nogen på så kort tid kan tage så store skridt i deres forståelse af handicap, og nu er så frustreret over det standardiserede perspektiv.

Jos: Ja, det gør jeg. Jeg synes, det er virkelig interessant, for jeg har selv haft lignende oplevelser i forhold til arkitekturuddannelse og praksis. Der er en slags – selv når folk begynder at engagere sig i idéen om at få flere personer med funktionsnedsættelse involveret – så er det som om, man ikke nødvendigvis tænker, at det betyder, man skal ændre den måde, arkitektur undervises eller praktiseres på. Hvorimod det du siger jo netop peger på det første der dukker op, den her besættelse af arbejdskultur ikke? Altså produktivitet, du ved, producer-producer-producer-kulturen, og så er der en masse ret komplekse magtdynamikker, som ofte kan være ret diskriminerende over for mange forskellige ikke-normative personer. Jeg ved, at du har oplevet din del af, og jeg tror, det der interesserer mig er, at det ikke føles så anderledes end da jeg var arkitektstuderende i 1970’erne. Noget har ændret sig, men noget virker stadig dybt indlejret. Jeg beder dig ikke om at være den, der skal løse problemet, men jeg er virkelig interesseret i, hvad det er for nogle ting, der kan muliggøre en forandring? Er det du siger at, de yngre generationer, der kommer frem, ved mere og er langt mere bevidste?

Poppy: Ja, jeg synes, det er et svært spørgsmål, men jeg tror at der sker en form for fremgang. Jeg synes den måde yngre mennesker i branchen bliver mobiliseret på, især når det gælder arkitektur som profession, er virkelig positiv. At man kalder de virkelig giftige arbejdskulturer ud, som f.eks. at arbejde så meget overtid, at man reelt bliver betalt mindre end mindstelønnen, eller stillinger, der – selvom en Part Two-placering i Storbritannien er tænkt som en graduate-position – bliver slået op med krav om to til tre års erfaring. Men hvis man følger de professionelle retningslinjer, burde man aldrig have en Part Two med to til tre års erfaring, fordi man burde være videre i sin udvikling. Jeg syntes folk er langt mindre tolerante over for den slags arbejdsvilkår nu, og jeg håber virkelig, at det vil begynde at sprede sig til uddannelsesområdet.

Jeg synes der er et stort problem i arkitekturuddannelsen, hvor der næsten er en slags generationsbetinget traume-cyklus, hvor mange undervisere fra den gamle skole har den opfattelse af at de bare skal blive ved med at presse og nedgøre de studerende, og så vil de producere. At kaste folk ud på dybt vand og hvor holdningen er, at hvis folk falder fra, så må de jo aldrig have været gode nok. Man ser dette mønster hos undervisere, der alle har haft den samme underviser, og som så underviser på samme måde, og jeg synes det er en virkelig svær cyklus at bryde.

Men jeg synes, der findes nogle virkelig positive eksempler på, at det kan gøres godt, og jeg vil altid gerne fremhæve min bachelorunderviser Carlotta Novella fra tredje år på min uddannelse, som er en del af public works [en arkitektpraksis]. Hun havde en helt utrolig forståelse for mennesker og for, hvordan man får det bedste frem i dem. Der var studerende som meget let kunne være droppet ud på grund af ting der skete i deres liv, og alligevel havde hun denne, ærligt talt, mystiske evne til at få dem med og sørge for at de dukkede op og fik produceret arbejde, og på en meget blid måde få dem til at deltage i en kritik, som de ellers aldrig ville være mødt op til. Hun gjorde det sådan, at tærsklen for deltagelse var så behagelig for dem, at de kunne være med. Jeg syntes, vi skal begynde at... det er den kumulative effekt, at hun var min underviser, og jeg tager hendes praksis med mig, på samme måde som så mange undervisere tager de negative praksisser med sig, som de selv har oplevet. Så jeg håber, at med lidt tid og flere mennesker, der kommer ind med disse langt mere positive pædagogiske tilgange, vil der opstå en kumulativ effekt den anden vej.

Jos: Ja, det er virkelig vigtigt og interessant, synes jeg. Jeg mener, altså det føles for mig som noget, der i høj grad relaterer sig til det at være handicappet, for det handler ikke om, at man er mindre i stand til at være en virkelig dygtig designer, men det er som du siger, at man har behov for adgang, og man bliver måske hurtigere træt, har ikke nok “skeer” eller skal håndtere aspekter af livet, som ikke-handicappede ikke behøver at forholde sig til. Så for mig handler det om, at det virkelig, det genlyder, eller resonerer, eller spreder sig, jeg ved ikke helt hvilket ord der passer, på tværs af mange forskellige mennesker. Der er en antagelse om, at hvis man viser svaghed, eller hvis man tager sig tid til at tænke over tingene, eller hvis man er forsigtig i sine forslag, så er det et tegn på, at man ikke burde være der. I stedet er det måske netop er et tegn på, at man på længere sigt bliver en virkelig god designer, fordi man tænker kreativt og åbent.

Poppy: Ja. Jeg synes også at ego spiller en stor rolle i det. Jeg tror, nogle af de bedste designere er dem, der ikke har det store ego, især når det gælder design, fordi de er villige til at lytte til andre, villige til at gå på kompromis, og villige til at overveje forskellige perspektiver og forsøge at få det hele til at hænge sammen, i stedet for den her meget ego-drevne arkitektur, hvor individet træffer alle beslutninger. Så jeg syntes, at ved at sortere de mennesker fra, som ikke er helt så selvsikre eller ego-drevne, ved at støtte dem, får man arkitekter og designere, der ønsker at engagere sig med mange forskellige stemmer.

Jos: Ja. Jeg bliver ved med at stille dig næsten umulige eller svære spørgsmål, fordi det er ting, vi taler om, og som vi taler om i The DisOrdinary Architecture Project, nemlig hvordan vi kan bevæge os fremad, på alle mulige måder, både i det små og i det store. Jeg er ret interesseret i, om du har nogle centrale tanker om, hvad du gerne vil sige til mennesker uden funktionsnedsættelse, der er masser af virkelig gode mennesker derude, men du ved, dem der måske sidder fast i deres vaner. Hvad er det for nogle ting, de bør tænke over? Arkitektfagfolk, undervisere eller studerende uden funktionsnedsættelser?

Poppy: Ja, jeg tror, det er et ret almindeligt spørgsmål. Det handler om, hvordan vi rammesætter tingene, så vi får så mange som muligt med ombord. Jeg er ret heldig, fordi jeg har arbejdet på tværs af mange forskellige områder inden for de kreative industrier. Jeg har arbejdet med arkitektur, kunst og film, og meget af det har generelt været relateret til handicap og tilgængelighed, og det er interessant hvordan forskellige ting resonerer med forskellige mennesker. Jeg tror, en god måde at rammesætte det på nogle gange er at sige til folk, at de bør håbe på en dag at blive funktionsnedsat. Generelt betyder det, at der sker hurtigt i en ulykke – men hvis man ønsker at leve et langt liv, så vil det næsten med garanti indebære funktionsnedsættelse på et tidspunkt. Det kan være en midlertidig funktionsnedsættelse, som et brækket ben eller endda graviditet, som man kan betragte som en slags midlertidigt funktionsnedsættelse, fordi ens måde at være i verden på ikke længere passer ind i normen. Men også aldring. Hvis man ønsker at leve et langt liv – til man er 80, 90, 100, så vil man på et tidspunkt være funktionsnedsat.

Så, du ved, ud fra et rent egoistisk perspektiv, så design for dig selv. Det er en af de ting, jeg har oplevet i filmverdenen, publikum bliver ældre og mister hørelsen, og så tager man dem med til en visning, hvor alt er tekstet, og de siger “Det var fantastisk, jeg forstod alt, hvad der skete”, og nogle bemærker ikke engang, at det skyldes underteksterne. Det er netop pointen, at mange af disse mennesker ikke bare kunne stoppe med at gå i biografen eller engagere sig i filmkulturen, og mange af dem har måske tidligere været meget modstandere af undertekster. “Jeg kan ikke lide dem, de forstyrrer det visuelle udtryk”. Jeg tænker altid, vil du hellere se filmen med undertekster, eller slet ikke se den?

Og jeg synes, det samme gælder for arkitektur. At have en funktionsnedsættelse er ikke en dårlig ting. Det kan være fantastisk. Det kan være dejligt. Det kan også bare være en neutral oplevelse. Det er bare en anden måde at være i verden på. Det, der gør funktionsnedsættelse svært, og til tider elendigt, er når man møder barrierer. Mange mennesker i den konventionelle arkitektursfære ser det som noget, der er helt adskilt fra dem. Men når man tænker, når du bliver ældre, eller hvis du pludselig bliver handicappet, vil du så stadig kunne bruge disse rum? Vil du stadig kunne arbejde? Undervise? Være en del af arkitekturen? Så jeg tror, at det at give folk et næsten egoistisk perspektiv og få dem til at overveje, hvad de selv ville ønske der skete, og det kan være en måde at få dem med.

Jos: Ja, det er virkelig godt. Før vi slutter, vil jeg gerne berøre et andet område, som vi ikke har talt om endnu, nemlig din egen kreative praksis. Jeg ved, du har tænkt over rumlige oplevelser som blin, og jeg føler, at en af de ting, der kom ud af Architecture Beyond Sight-projektet, som du nævnte – et kort kursus for blinde og svagsynede med interesse for arkitektur – var, at det også handlede om at finde nye designmetoder. Det var ikke bare et spørgsmål om at gøre det muligt for folk at passe ind i den konventionelle arkitekturpraksis, men at vi faktisk kunne begynde at bevæge os videre hen imod langt mindre visuelt orienterede designmetoder. Så det ville være fantastisk at høre dig tale lidt om det.

Poppy: Ja, det er et virkelig komplekst emne, fordi arkitektur er så visuelt. Selv den måde, folk tænker på rum inden for arkitektur, er dybt visuelt. Mandy Redvers-Rowe, som også er blind og arbejder med DisOrdinary, og jeg lavede en workshop med nogle arkitekter, og som opvarmning lavede vi en ikke-visuel øvelse, hvor deltagerne skulle stikke hånden ned i en pose, føle på en genstand og beskrive den for personen ved siden af. Og som om det var planlagt, spurgte stort set alle i gruppen, i det øjeblik de rørte genstanden, hvilken farve er den?

Jos: …altså de havde allerede en idé om farven og fortalte os, hvilken farve de troede, den havde, ja…

Poppy: Jeg synes, det var sådan et øjeblik, hvor man tænker, at vi virkelig har lang vej igen! Den totale centrering af visuel bearbejdning, visuelle arbejdsmetoder og visuel forståelse af verden. Meget af det arbejde, jeg har lavet, handler netop om, hvordan blinde mennesker tænker på rum. Altså de meget forskellige måder, blinde mennesker danner en rumlig forståelse i hovedet, i stedet for at kunne se efter noget. Jeg får ofte at vide, at jeg har en god hukommelse for, hvor ting befinder sig, men det er jo fordi, jeg ikke bare kan kigge hen over rummet og se det. Så jeg er nødt til, når jeg står ved noget at huske, at det var der, så vi har disse meget komplekse kort i hovedet.

Men der findes så mange strategier, det er det klassiske. Du møder én blind person, du har mødt én blind person. Du har ikke mødt “blindhed” som sådan. Men det, der stadig er meget udfordrende i en konventionel arkitekturskole, er at skubbe til de gængse repræsentationsformer. Jeg ville elske at arbejde med taktile tegninger og udforske det, men vi har et standardiseret visuelt sprog for arkitekturtegninger – hvis jeg tegner en trappe eller en rampe ved man, at det er en trappe eller en rampe, fordi vi har disse konventioner. Men vi har ikke sådanne konventioner for taktile tegninger. Vi har heller ikke standardiserede måder at lave taktile tegninger på.

Så når man forsøger at skabe alternative måder at producere arkitektur på, er der ingen standarder at læne sig op ad. Det betyder, at hver gang man introducerer en taktil tegning til en blind person, kræver det en forklaring, typisk fra en seende person, hvilket igen forstærker disse magtdynamikker, hvor man ikke kan tilgå tegningen uafhængigt, som en seende person kan med enhver plan, hvor som helst i verden, og stort set forstå den. På den anden side præsenterer jeg mit arbejde for et udelukkende seende publikum, og selvom jeg ville elske bare at aflevere en hel portefølje i punktskrift ved årets afslutning og sige værsgo, så er der også spørgsmål om bedømmelse, vurderingskriterier og læringsmål.

Men jeg synes, at arbejdet med DisOrdinary og Architecture Beyond Sight, både det år, jeg var deltager, og da jeg kom tilbage som underviser har været fascinerende. De forskellige måder, blinde og svagsynede mennesker producerer ting på, hvordan de modellerer, skriver, beskriver. Zoe Partington, som er medstifter af DisOrdinary, er en fantastisk konceptuel skribent, ligesom Mandy [Redvers-Rowe]. Men andre tænker helt gennem modellering med papir og karton, eller gennem bevægelse, altså kropslige metoder. Så jeg synes, der er så meget rum for udforskning, og der er så meget rigdom. Der er bare ikke nok personer med funktionsnedsættelser, der udforsker disse ting endnu.

Jos: Ja, jeg er helt enig, for jeg synes, vi burde se det som, det hele er så kreativt, de kreative muligheder, de kreative og generative potentialer i at tænke over de utroligt forskellige måder, hvorpå blinde og svagsynede mennesker kortlægger rum. De er meget rumlige, men det er også meget sanseligt. Måder, hvorpå vi kunne have repræsentationsformer, der er centreret omkring berøring, lugt eller lyd-beskrivelser. Alt dette burde ses som utroligt smukke måder at bevæge sig fremad på. Men som du siger, der er også behov for konventioner, og du arbejder i et meget komplekst felt.

Poppy: Jeg tror, én ting jeg også vil sige, når man skal overbevise folk om, hvorfor de bør engagere sig i handicap – ud over bare at være et ordentligt menneske, der mener, at alle bør have adgang til ting! – så er det, at man i kunst, kultur og arkitektur så ofte leder efter noget nyt. Og man hører så tit, at siden postmodernismen findes der ikke noget nyt længere, alt refererer til noget andet. Men handicap er ikke blevet udforsket. Vi har knap nok skrabet i overfladen af det potentiale og den kreative kraft, der ligger i handicap. Så faktisk, hvis du vil lave noget nyt, hvis du vil lave noget, folk ikke har set før, og hvis du vil bryde grænser og være den første til noget, så engager dig i handicap. For hvem vil ikke gerne være banebrydende?

Jos: Det er en fantastisk tanke at slutte af med. Tusind tak, Poppy. Tak for samtalen.

Poppy: Tak.

Jos: I denne sidste episode, Universal Design and … Disabled Creativity, ønskede jeg at fremhæve, hvor vigtigt det er at inddrage viden og erfaringer fra forskellige personer med funktionsnedsættelse, og at pege på måder, hvorpå det kan lade sig gøre. Det har været fantastisk at høre fra Else om, hvordan inddragelse af forskellige kroppe kan åbne nye måder at tænke og skabe mode på. Fra Masa og Peter om at synliggøre de små glæder ved at leve med en anderledes krop eller psyke. Og fra Poppy om at bryde ny grund som arkitekt med funktionsnedsættelse. Mange, mange tak til Else, Masa, Peter og Poppy for at tale med mig i dag – og til Det Kongelige Akademi og Bevica Fonden for at støtte dette projekt.

Disse podcasts dækker kun en lille del af de mange fantastiske initiativer omkring handicap, tilgængelighed og inklusion på Det Kongelige Akademi i København og andre steder. Men vi håber, at det at dele og reflektere over vores særlige erfaringer med at gentænke handicap i uddannelse og praksis kan hjælpe andre studerende, undervisere og praktikere med også at åbne op for innovative, kreative og kritiske måder at inkludere handicap og adgang i det, de gør.

Jeg er Jos Boys, gæsteprofessor ved Det Kongelige Akademi og meddirektør for The DisOrdinary Architecture Project. Denne podcast er produceret af Rakkerpak Productions. Tusind tak fordi du lyttede med.

References, links and further reading

When I mention Nossell and company and the start I am reffering to "Nossell & Co." 

Link: https://www.nossellogco.dk

I mention an "amazing, amazing cinematographor". Her name is "Louise McLaughlin".

Link: https://www.louisemclaughlin.com/

"Copenhagen Docks" is supposed to be "CPH:DOX" (Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival)

Link: https://cphdox.dk/