International Day of Person's with Disabilities: The DisOrdinary Architecture Project
Zoe Partington, Co-Director of The Disordinary Architecture Project and member of the RIBA North West EDI Group explains the value of the project ahead of International Day of Person's with Disabilities.
We have to ask why disability has somehow remained consistently stuck in a non-historical, a-theoretical and, most crucially, seriously under-explored category in relation to building and urban design practices. It is invisible in both avant-garde and mainstream architectural theories and discourses, just as it has been a persistent absence in critical and cultural theory more generally. Perhaps this illustrates just how deeply disability remains widely avoided, compared to other disadvantaged identities. Unlike gender, race or sexuality – and the feminist, post-colonial and queer studies that underpin associated scholarship and debate – it seems that we assume ‘disability’ to be unable to bring any kind of criticality or creativity to the activity of architecture.
- Zoe Partington
