The Discursive Spaces intensive workshops run from Wednesday 11th April to Friday 27th April 2007. This blog is to capture work in progress, comments, feedback and issues.
We would like each participant to begin by saying what you would like to get out of the Discursive Spaces project...
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10 comments:
When I originally looked at the Inside Out artists website, I thought two things. First, I was really interested to find work that enabled creative - even poetic - engagements with disability and the built environment, not limited within the language or technical solutions of the 'accessibility' debate.
Second, I felt really frustrated because these were very much artistic interpretations that did not touch directly with the concerns of designers.
So what I want from this project is the opportunity to explore how the experiences and insights of deaf and disabled artists can enhance student design ideas and work; can help develop our understandings of the intimate details of diverse forms of inhabitation.
I see Discursive Spaces as a genuine opportunity for the artists of Inside Out to expand the debate around creative space through a truly creative partnership between artists and future architects and designers.
There are real issues and practical questions around access and inclusive design to address but Inside Out offers so much more. As disabled artists and users, we are forced to constantly evaluate form and function and engage creatively with practical problems around negotiating space.
This emotional and physical engagement with space allows for a much broader debate around how we as people relate to architectural and space.While the work of the artists does address considerations of inclusive design, what it also challenges and encourages is a philosophical and creative engagement with multifunctional and often transgressive use of space.
The work addresses the crossover between public and private space,explores hidden histories and presents the idea of creative solutions to practical problems. It is hoped that the artists will learn more about the vocabulary and constraints of design and that the work of the artists will broaden the students perspectives around the idea of plural space. We have much to learn from each other.
It is hoped that the work, opportunities and issues raised will dispel the notion of “us” and “them”. Disabled artists are at the center of this project allowing us as users and designers to reconsider these often dry issues in a fresh and challenging way.
If disabled artists are included and consulted within the creative approach then designs, plans and developments will be unique and we can ensure that access to the built environment is not only addressed as an adaptation or functional requirement but as a creative integral part of the design process itself.
As artists with disability, it is easy to see our work as being simply about raising awareness and our work read simply through our disability.With this in mind it would be wrong of me to speak for all the artists of Inside Out. For myself, I think that we are first and foremost people, and secondly artists who through issues raised through our disability ask many questions of perception and professional practice and raise many challenges around normative values.These are, I believe considerations that face us all, as creative professionals.
In a poem dated August 1914 Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:
….A travers nous s’envolent
Les oiseaux en silence, O, moi qui veux grandir
Je regarde au dehors, et l’arbre en moi grandit.
(silently the birds
Fly through us, O, I, who long to grow,
I look outside myself, and the tree inside me grows.)
There are two kinds of space, interior and exterior. As artists, architects and writers we are required to inhabit these places. To ignore either limits creative philosophical expression.
A person with a disability perhaps has a heighten awareness of external space because of their inability to traverse the space as freely as the non-disabled person. But within his internal space difficulties disappear and the human condition becomes universal.
This project (Discursive Spaces) will allow architects and designers at the beginning of their creative journey to consider the interior and exterior spaces of people with disabilities with the object of making exterior spaces universally accessible.
Is it possible?
It is my hope that through the Discursive Spaces arena and the creative relationship between the students of the Architecture Department and the Inside Out Artists that exterior spaces can be created in such a way that the built environment can be shared and experienced in the same way by everyone.
I understand the frustrations felt by some around Inside Out but I think the bigger picture is how do we work collaboratively and move the thinking on so that we engage artists and designers view points together in a holistic way. The underlying reason for Inside Out and putting the artists voice first was and for disability arts, to reclaim how environments are designed for disabled people? In our passion to be heard and recognised as users of these spaces we excluded the main audience we hoped to target! This happened for very good reasons and I feel that it is very important that during this project we investigate these reasons and understand individual needs and consider other perspectives. The partnership will provide inspiring solutions for everyone if we listen to each other. What I hope everyone gains from this project is open and honest discussion within an equality framework. An understanding of why we need to address design in a collaborative way but also that we understand that this is a process and a unique opportunity.
After speaking to the artists,My creative design skills have become much more aware of attention to detail. It has made me realise that there is many faults and inconsideration in building design today.
I hope to further improve my design giving it an all round richness through understanding every aspect in the design of it and creating a inhabitable space for all members of the public to experience.
In doing so, I will have acheived a successful design for everybody to enjoy.
The individuals with infirmity cannot be moved freely - go to their work, to a restaurant, in the theatre, in the cinema, in a library, in the shops, or even meet their friends - because the lack of mass transport, the pavements and the buildings are not accessible.
-The free locomotion of individuals with infirmity in the European Union is a utopia, because the legislative obstacles that do not allow their exit from the country of their permanent residence,
-More than 200.000 individuals with infirmity in Europe they are forced to live in institutions, experiencing the deprival of exercise of their fundamental human rights.
My thoughts are simlar to Jos.. I was impress with the ideas for this project and excited too! But I would like to see the students/designers to explore what 'disabled', 'deaf', 'blind', etc.. artist needs are to manage an every day routine as an artist. For example if I was in a wheelchair - how can I carry all my canvases into the studio space and create my work without depending on another body? what are the access needs?
As a deaf person, what kind of things need to be in a building to allow me to feel relax and safe to create. I would need a space that allow me to think, express emotionally without any fears and worries if their be someone knocking on the door or if their be a fire... those thoughts are not placed in the design - its needed. I look forward to seeing the next set of desgins.
after working with the artists over the past two weeks i feel i have already become much more aware of some of the problems people with disabilities face with accessing buildings. i really think this has benefited me and will effect the way i design and think about my work in the future.
Today I seen the site and noticed that there are areas that were not mentioned on the design elements
There is a lot of areas that one could adapted/changed in the space to meet the access needs.
This building offers a great opportunity to take risks, test out the designs further that may seem impossible, but maybe is not.
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