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Universal Design and...
A podcast celebrating the guest professorship of Jos Boys 2022-2025
Background
The architectural activist, educator and writer Jos Boys was guest professor at the Royal Danish Academy between 2022 and 2025, funded by the Bevica Foundation. She is co-founder and co-director of The DisOrdinary Architecture Project. This is a UK-based not-for-profit platform that brings disabled artists into design education to co-develop alternative ways of engaging with disability in education and practice. To commemorate this three-year collaboration with the Royal Danish Academy Jos hosts three 45-minute podcasts.
Each episode explores different ways of re-thinking the concept of Universal Design. The podcasts aim to explore the many collaborations with practitioners, researchers, educators and students at the Academy, and to capture and share what we learnt about engaging more creatively with issues of disability, access and inclusion. The podcast series is called ‘Universal Design and…” with discussions covering key themes that have arisen during the professorship.
Aimed mainly at those working in the built environment, design and cultural sectors, we hope these podcasts will also be of value to anyone interested in architecture and design, and to disabled people more generally.
Going Beyond Universal Design
As Jos Boys explains in the podcast: Universal Design is based on a seemingly simple principle that all products, buildings and environments should be usable to the greatest extent possible by everyone, regardless of their age, ability, or status in life. It is an important aim, but one that is hard to achieve. Since it was coined by the American disabled architect Ronald Mace in the 1980s, many disabled scholars and activists have offered variations on, and critiques of, Universal Design. Yet these important ongoing debates about disability, access and inclusion are still not much known about in architecture and design worlds.
Listen to the podcast conversations to explore more about Universal Design, but also how we should go beyond it.
Episode 1: Universal Design and… rethinking disability
The first episode explores the problem of how stereotypes of disability (and ability) limit ways of designing for diverse bodies and minds. It considers concepts such as fitting-misfitting and starting for difference as methods for valuing the richness of human bio and neuro-diversity; and offers examples of how our different ways of being in the world can be creative design generators, rather than a problem for designers.
Guests: Camilla Ryhl (Research Director, Bevica Foundation) Beata Hemer (architect, educator and PhD candidate, Royal Danish Academy), Helen Stratford (UK-based disabled artist-architect)
Episode 2: Universal Design and… making better buildings and places
The second episode discusses how we can map existing barriers to universal design in rich and creative ways, connecting to current projects on the Royal Danish Academy, to better inform a more accessible future for disabled people.
Guests: Marcus Aminaka Wilmont (fashion designer and educator, Royal Danish Academy), Olga Popovic Larsen (architect and educator, Royal Danish Academy) Roberta Cassi (architect and researcher, Royal Danish Academy) Adam Linden Neilsen (research and teaching assistant, Royal Danish Academy) Masashi Kajita (research cluster lead, architect and educator, Royal Danish Academy)
Episode 3: Universal design and… disabled creativity
The last episode explores what can be learnt from diverse disabled people’s expertise and creativity in making more inclusive products, buildings and environments. Most importantly this is about enabling disabled people to become designers in their own right, as well as being involved in design and educational processes.
Guests: Else Skjold (fashion researcher, designer and educator), Masashi Kajita (research cluster lead, architect and educator, Royal Danish Academy), Peter Graesboll Holm (disabled researcher and activist, Knowledge Centre on Disability), Poppy Levison (UK-based blind architectural student).