How do people with physical disabilities or chronic illnesses experience different environs and spaces?
ROM is hereby announcing a third open call that seeks to shed light on who has the power to define architecture and urban development. We want to hear from architects, writers, curators, activists, and artists who in different ways are interested in the topic of bodies and places, with a focus on illnesses or physical disabilities.When you are used to navigating a world that is not built for your particular body, you find many creative solutions. And focusing on these solutions makes it possible to uncover unfair structures both in society in general and in buildings in particular. Who has the power to define when planning and constructing buildings meant for everyone, and what alternative practices might enhance our surroundings and make them more diverse?
As early as the year 2000, the architects Iain Borden and Jane Rendell urged the field of architecture to include more voices from marginalized groups so that a more nuanced perspective on architecture and its history could come to the fore. This also applies to people who live with a physical disability, something the architect Jos Boys has discussed in her writings. In Doing Disability Differently (2016), she writes of how disabilities often become a technical or legal question in architecture, where people with disabilities often become an afterthought in the design process. Instead, Boys wants architects to conceive of buildings and cities with physically disabled bodies specifically in mind.