Why Does Architecture Need to Engage with Critical Disability Studies?

To cite this work: Rehan, E. (2025). Why Does Architecture Need to Engage with Critical Disability Studies?  Disability Dialogues. Sheffield: iHuman, University of Sheffield. 

Esraa Rehan is a Master of Architecture graduate from the Manchester School of Architecture. Her work lies at the intersection of architecture, disability, and pedagogy. She aims to use disability as a creative methodology within architectural education.

The designed world does not suit anyone perfectly. At different times in our lives, each of us encounters problems with the spaces we inhabit and the products we use. Designers are traditionally trained to address the needs of a mythical “average” user, but in reality, this group does not exist. As Story et al. (1998) remind us, every individual is unique, and humanity as a species is profoundly diverse. In this sense, the very notion of an “average client” for architecture is non-existent. Indeed, one could argue that we are all disabled in some form or another.

This recognition is underscored by statistics from the World Health Organization, which reports that “an estimated 1.3 billion people – or 16% of the global population – experience a significant disability today. This number is growing because of an increase in noncommunicable diseases and people living longer. Persons with disabilities are a diverse group, and factors such as sex, age, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, race, ethnicity and their economic situation affect their experiences in life and their health needs.” Yet these figures are limited in scope, reflecting primarily health-related disability and reported cases. If we broaden the frame to consider other social, cultural, and economic barriers, the numbers shift dramatically encompassing undiagnosed women, as well as individuals marginalised through social or economic disadvantage. In this broader sense, disability is not confined to a small minority but represents a condition that touches everyone.

It is important, therefore, to view disability not as belonging to a distant or separate group but as a condition visible in the people we encounter daily. In many ways, disability is the new normal; barriers of various kinds pervade all lives. Douglas Baynton, as cited by Jay Timothy Dolmage, has argued that “disability has functioned historically to justify inequality for disabled people themselves, but it has also done so for women and minority groups…. the concept of disability has been used to justify discrimination against other groups by attributing disability to them.” Architecture is complicit in this same logic when it naturalises a narrow sensorium, a limited body plan, and a rigid work rhythm as the unquestioned benchmark of competence and rigour, justifying difference as an adjunct worth confining into minimum legal requirements.

From this perspective, disability becomes the true client of architecture. It should be understood as a universal condition that defines human existence across time. Critical Disability Studies (CDS) therefore reorients architecture to acknowledge diversity as a baseline rather than a deviation. By rejecting the myth of the “average,” architecture can better reflect the heterogeneity of lived experience. Disability, in this framing, is not simply a personal attribute or a medical diagnosis but a relational phenomenon—emerging at the juncture where bodies interact with environments. Garland-Thomson’s concept of misfitting captures this precisely: “disability emerges at the interface where bodies meet worlds that have been normed against them” (Garland-Thomson, 2011). Disability, then, is not rare or anomalous rather inherent to the design–body relationship itself.

The built environment vividly demonstrates the inadequacy of its own assumptions. Homes, cities, and infrastructures repeatedly fail those who cannot conform to normative expectations of movement, perception, or temporality. Here, CDS provides architecture with a conceptual framework for diagnosing and undoing these failures. It exposes ableism cultures embedded in the industry’s ethos. Campbell defines ableism as “a network of beliefs, processes and practices that produces a particular kind of self and body (the corporeal standard) that is projected as the perfect, species-typical and therefore essential and fully human” (Campbell, 2009). To challenge this standard is to take on both a decolonising and a de-normalising task: exposing how modernist standardisation, colonial extractivism, and professional metrics of efficiency have hardened into an epistemic regime that sidelines difference while claiming universality.

A key question arises: how can architects anticipate or design for unknown forms of disability? The answer lies in reconfiguring the politics of design itself and reconsidering the economic priorities that underpin architectural practice. By repositioning disability within these politics of profit, architecture can shift from token inclusion towards actionable change. Jay Timothy Dolmage draws a parallel in higher education, describing it as “an industry which beyond the surface is dominated by economic consideration but most of the time doesn't want to be seen as a business perhaps more dangerously because higher education does champion values like autonomy freedom of expression and creativity it becomes altogether too easy to ignore its economic character.” Architecture education operates under similar conditions. Despite its claims to creativity and autonomy, it often maintains structures of exclusivity. Yet, if disabled students are meaningfully included, they can radically transform architectural processes by introducing non-typical ways of space-making. Disability fosters adaptability, and disabled people often exercise design creativity without recognition. Even limited study of such adaptability can open new methodological possibilities for the architectural field.

Still, CDS cautions against instrumentalising disability merely for its utility. Disabled people should not be expected to justify their participation by demonstrating creativity, adaptability, or productivity. Rather, it is the architectural profession that must explain why disabled voices have been systematically excluded, and why ableist definitions of efficiency and standardisation continue to dominate. Genuine inclusion requires that disabled creatives be recognised as active participants in two essential ways. First, as users, their engagement enriches community consultation and ensures design processes reflect lived realities. Second, as designers themselves, they introduce alternative approaches and techniques that can redefine architectural rigour, validating non-normative methods of making.

This reframing has profound consequences. It shifts disabled people from being passive recipients of accommodation to being valued contributors whose insights reshape both the workplace and the built environment. The demographic lens expands, obliging architects to view society as a pool of diverse abilities rather than a hierarchy of competence.

Nonetheless, the challenge of change must not be underestimated. Architecture remains deeply entangled with logics of efficiency, standardisation, and regulation; imperatives that govern professional practice, pedagogy, and design codes alike. Bringing disability into the heart of architectural production therefore demands confronting these imperatives directly. This confrontation reveals a paradox: while architecture proclaims inclusivity, its industrial models of production persistently treat difference as inefficiency. Disability, in this paradoxical sense, is both excluded and essential. It operates as a figure of disruption, a limit condition that exposes the profession’s narrow measures of value.

At the same time, this paradox opens new possibilities. If disability is understood as the presence of barriers, then the profession must recognise its own limitations as productive ground for transformation. Disability thus pushes architecture to radicalise its processes and outcomes from within. By embracing disability as both a reality and a conceptual framework, architecture gains the capacity to imagine environments that are not merely accessible but genuinely hospitable to the multiplicity of human life.

References

Story, M.F., Mueller, J.L. and Mace, R.L. (1998) The Universal Design File Designing for people of all ages and abilities. revised edition. Distributed by ERIC Clearinghouse. 

Disability (2023) World Health Organization. Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/disability-and-health (Accessed: 01 September 2025). 

Dolmage, J. (2017) Academic ableism: Disability and higher education. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 

Garland-Thomson, R. (2011) ‘Misfits: A feminist materialist disability concept’, Hypatia, 26(3), pp. 591–609. doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.2011.01206.x. 

Campbell, F. (2009) Contours of ableism: The production of disability and Abledness. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.