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Van der Linden et al. 2016 NJAR - From accessibility to experience.pdf (1.33 MB)

From accessibility to experience: Opportunities for inclusive design in architectural practice

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journal contribution
posted on 2018-11-09, 14:09 authored by Valerie Van der Linden, Hua Dong, Ann Heylighen
This paper presents an explorative study on the relation between architectural practice and inclusive design. It is hypothesised that the limited adoption of inclusive design in architectural practice may relate to a particular mind-set and/or a lack of information formats that are compatible with (architectural) design practice. The first part of this paper reviews literature from various design disciplines on potential factors that influence the adoption of inclusive design. Influences are sought in the direction of the international context of inclusive design, the limitations of current information formats, and the specific context of architectural practice. The second part of this paper reports empirical research results from 20 interviews with different stakeholders in architectural practice in Flanders, Belgium. The aim of these interviews was to investigate current perceptions, sources and tools, as well as perceived barriers and motivations for inclusive design. Combining these findings with those from other design disciplines reveals opportunities for a closer relation between architectural practice and inclusive design. It was found that a focus on accessibility legislation – both in terms of content and format– inhibits a potential broader understanding of user experience, which could correspond more to architects’ way of working.

Funding

This research received funding from the European Research Council under the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement n° 335002, the Research Fund KU Leuven (OT/12/051), and the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO)

History

School

  • Design

Published in

Nordic Journal of Architectural Research

Volume

28

Issue

2

Pages

33 - 58 (25)

Citation

VAN DER LINDEN, V., DONG, H. and HEYLIGHEN, A., 2016. From accessibility to experience: Opportunities for inclusive design in architectural practice. Nordic Journal of Architectural Research, 28(2), pp. 33-58.

Publisher

SINTEF Academic Press

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2016

Notes

This paper was published in the journal Nordic Journal of Architectural Research and the definitive published version is available at http://arkitekturforskning.net/na/issue/view/82

ISSN

1893-5281

Language

  • en

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