Bird Yoga

April 19th, 2012 at 11:20PM

hardcorefornerds:

nefariousnewt:

define-space:

i really admire the design for these stairs and how they incorporate a wheelchair access ramp. in a world were barrier free design is essential to living a full and happy life, its amazing to see landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander has taken literal steps to design stairs AROUND a ramp, instead of the other way around.

This is totally cool.

I didn’t look through all 8,000 notes on this to see if someone else had made the same point as I’m going to make - and someone with more experience of disability, accessibility or Universal Design issues than I accumulated in nine months of an internship, could improve or correct the criticism - but doesn’t this design mean that someone using a wheelchair would be continually cutting across the paths of people using the steps, and vice versa? (Plus for people with mobility/vision difficulties there is a lack of definition between the ramp and steps, and an overall maze-like quality to the layout)
The two most recents comments on this were along the lines of ‘yay, accessibility!’ and “cool, this looks like an M.C. Escher painting”, which might give a clue as to the potential incompatibility. Maybe it’s not, and plenty of practical innovation can come from experimenting with geometrical concepts, but it seems like to “design stairs AROUND a ramp” creates fundamental problems stemming above from the literal translation of accessible theorising to the physical environment.

As a walker, I personally don’t like this design because it looks like it would be way too easy to stub a toe on/fall off the edge of one of the individual steps (and that is even without a visual impairment, other than a growing horde of “floaters” which my optometrist assures me are “age-related”).
Also, it looks like it would be easy to accidentally drive an electric wheelchair off the edge of that ramp.
Nevertheless, I rise to hazard a defense of this design.
From time to time I visit a local college whose career-placement dept. aims to help students with disabilities enter the workforce. This dept. once produced a poster for the program feauring a woman in a workish setting using a white cane and accompanied by a guide dog. The poster was titled “You Can Do Anything!” And the poster was not Brailled, which meant that besides it being smarmy as all get-out, the “you” it addressed may well have found it totally inaccessible. This was stupid.
But—like the staircase design—the poster promoted inclusion of persons with disabilities even if it does not directly facilitate their inclusion. (Actually, the longer I think about how easy it would be to drive a wheelchair off the edge of that ramp, the more I think that the design is intended as barbed commentary on the status or impact of accessibility efforts).
Perhaps the comment on the image claims more for the practical impact of this stair/ramp arrangement than the designer (/artist) would?
Thoughts?

nefariousnewt:

define-space:

i really admire the design for these stairs and how they incorporate a wheelchair access ramp. in a world were barrier free design is essential to living a full and happy life, its amazing to see landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander has taken literal steps to design stairs AROUND a ramp, instead of the other way around.

This is totally cool.

I didn’t look through all 8,000 notes on this to see if someone else had made the same point as I’m going to make - and someone with more experience of disability, accessibility or Universal Design issues than I accumulated in nine months of an internship, could improve or correct the criticism - but doesn’t this design mean that someone using a wheelchair would be continually cutting across the paths of people using the steps, and vice versa? (Plus for people with mobility/vision difficulties there is a lack of definition between the ramp and steps, and an overall maze-like quality to the layout)

The two most recents comments on this were along the lines of ‘yay, accessibility!’ and “cool, this looks like an M.C. Escher painting”, which might give a clue as to the potential incompatibility. Maybe it’s not, and plenty of practical innovation can come from experimenting with geometrical concepts, but it seems like to “design stairs AROUND a ramp” creates fundamental problems stemming above from the literal translation of accessible theorising to the physical environment.

As a walker, I personally don’t like this design because it looks like it would be way too easy to stub a toe on/fall off the edge of one of the individual steps (and that is even without a visual impairment, other than a growing horde of “floaters” which my optometrist assures me are “age-related”).

Also, it looks like it would be easy to accidentally drive an electric wheelchair off the edge of that ramp.

Nevertheless, I rise to hazard a defense of this design.

From time to time I visit a local college whose career-placement dept. aims to help students with disabilities enter the workforce. This dept. once produced a poster for the program feauring a woman in a workish setting using a white cane and accompanied by a guide dog. The poster was titled “You Can Do Anything!” And the poster was not Brailled, which meant that besides it being smarmy as all get-out, the “you” it addressed may well have found it totally inaccessible. This was stupid.

But—like the staircase design—the poster promoted inclusion of persons with disabilities even if it does not directly facilitate their inclusion. (Actually, the longer I think about how easy it would be to drive a wheelchair off the edge of that ramp, the more I think that the design is intended as barbed commentary on the status or impact of accessibility efforts).

Perhaps the comment on the image claims more for the practical impact of this stair/ramp arrangement than the designer (/artist) would?

Thoughts?