Kerb 27: Selective Perceptions

By Uro Publications

Contemporary society is approaching a reckoning of identity, to which the designers of our cities will have to respond. Kerb 27 addresses issues of inequity in our built and social environments, and asks the question: who are we really designing for?

Designers all have the capacity and responsibility to contribute to, and be aw

• Language: English
• Publisher: Uro Publications
• Release date: Oct 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781922601063

Book preview

Editorial :

Benjamin Jameson,

Emily Sinyavker,

Gary Ward,

Reuben Chan,

Shanley Price

The spaces we inhabit in our daily lives have been designed for people, but have they been designed for you?

There is a swathe of agendas embedded in the design process. They are predicated on who is setting out the brief, where it is in space, the political climate at the time, and the desired uses. Often in these designs particular people are designed for, and others are designed out. Throughout the design process designers can be complicit in, oblivious to, or supportive of the political agendas of the client.

This issue of Kerb poses two critical questions: firstly, whose responsibility is it to make sure that public spaces are accessible to all, especially those who are marginalised? And secondly, what influence can and do designers have over these outcomes? This complexity and tension is realised in the diversity of submissions, and is key in particular contributions.

Who is included in a space, and how, is largely dependent on the tools the designer has in their toolkit. Beyond our drawing conventions, software, and pen case, there are tools we can use that are less tangible. In our interview with him, Walter Hood called for landscape architects to increase their social theory literacy. It is this literacy, he argues, that is the key to us making unique, sensitive and valued landscapes, but that we are severely lacking as a discipline. Danielle Toronyi’s submission walks a similar line. Her work helps to communicate the experiences of people with neurodivergent conditions in a city to designers of urban space. Toronyi’s visual representation of sensorial perceptions gives neurotypical people a sense of the experiences of someone with autism. Without these tools, designers are unable to generate sensitive and valued landscapes, or work against the often hegemonic campaigns by private developers.

The Forest City project in Malaysia is reclaiming tracts of seagrass beds to develop the land into housing for 700,000 residents. Among other things, the project’s master plan intends to protect the seagrass ecosystem that local fishermen rely on. Just who the residents will be is unclear, as the local Malaysian fishermen cannot afford to live in the development.

What is interesting here is the hierarchy of considerations in this project. Forest City sits within a wider context of neo.imperial, capitalist agendas, and the dichotomy between corporate master plans and the lived experience of people.

This dichotomy reveals itself time and time again. There are pertinent questions to ask, especially when considering who is involved and, more importantly, what is lost when marginalised voices are shut out of the conversation.

Brent Greene and Abigail Varney show us how inviting queer readings of a space can open the conceived range of a landscape, and can work to remedy even the arguably failed capitalist landscape of the Docklands, Melbourne. Further, a piece by Lois Nguyen argues that disabled experiences are being designed out of urban space by the focus on legally mandated disability access requirements. Further, she argues that in doing so we are missing out on a challenging and exciting design question—how to design for diversity in physical experience (beyond a designated slope gradient or handrails). Both works highlight to us the value of involving traditionally marginalised voices in our design process, not only to ensure inclusiveness, but also for the wider benefits this brings to our designs.

Greene and Varney present a version of queerness in space that while subversive, doesn’t portray acts of queerness in space to be dangerous acts. In contrast, Eloise Choquette presents a story where being queer in a public space was a life or liberty endangering act.

Ironically, it has not always been so easy to be radically different in public (space). Choquette’s work highlights the struggles of the people who sit on the fringes of society almost a century ago with the Caravan Club, a safe space for queer identifying people that was consistently on the verge of closure and under surveillance. Yet today we continue to speak about the need for safe spaces for the queer community and other marginalised groups. In their struggle, we can learn about the courage to take action. It is because of them that we can enjoy the (limited) freedom we have today, and can push the goalposts even further.

As designers, if we are pushing for change, it is not enough to only passively read and talk, we must be bold, make claims and take action. This issue of Kerb provides us with an opportunity to better learn about the people around us, and to consider new ways to think about our designs. Further, this edition contributes to a wider call for action. In the words of Choquette’s submission, 'We must understand [design] from a different stance, as part of a wider, even more complex system. We cannot hope to change the way we design if we do not also work, continuously, to dismantle capitalism, racism and the patriarchy'.

ABSTRACT

The exclusivity of urban assemblage has granted access to only a select few, and only in select ways.

Cities house some of the most diverse populations, while paradoxically, corporate buy-in has created an increasingly homogenous built environment. Design that does not consider the diversity of its community produces a narrow outcome, and decision makers are at risk of becoming increasingly abstracted from their constituents.

In effect, this deepens the exclusion of particular populations from our cities, and reproduces predetermined outcomes, based on narrow and biased perspectives. We all have the capacity and responsibility to contribute to, and be aware of, the world we are designing. Structural inequity promotes race- class- gender- age- ability- sexuality- based exclusion, whose effects multiply throughout society. How should and do designers address this context through their practise?

Design should be for the people, both the expected and the unexpected user. We should be empathetic, open and accountable. Does that really reflect how work is done or valued today?  How are design professions responding to this tension, and what are the consequences if they don’t?

Contemporary society is approaching a reckoning of identity, to which designers will have to respond. Kerb 27 addresses issues of inequity in our built and social environments, and asks the question: Who are we really designing for? ◼︎

Danielle Toronyi :

Neurodiversity in the Sensorial City

'Autistic people face exclusion from public life due to the design of the urban realm and public space of which the sensory and auditory qualities are not considered.’

Autistic people are often hypersensitive to sensory constructions of space. When confronted with unexpected, new or multisensory information this hypersensitivity often causes extreme distress. Autistic people face exclusion from public life due to the design of the urban realm and public space of which the sensory and auditory qualities are not considered. Can cities be sensorially and acoustically accessible to autistic or otherwise neurodivergent people?

Here, a research methodology is presented which provides a critical opportunity for landscape architects and urban designers to work with, learn from and design for autistic people by removing acoustic and sensorial barriers to the urban environment. The proposed methodology is comprised of ethnographic field recordings and embodied kinesthetic evaluations of urban space, collected through sensory walks and interviews, as well as sound mapping studies and field recordings. This process is informed by Lawrence and Anna Halprin’s work in the RSVP cycles and Taking Part collaborative workshops, which stressed citizen participation and which serve as a model for an exploratory, sensorial analysis of the urban environment. The resultant ethnographic materials constitute a new inventory of the city by representing autistic and neurodivergent ways of sensing, hearing and knowing the urban environment.

Introduction

Landscape architects and urban designers are tasked with the critical responsibility to design inclusive and accessible environments for all users, including those with physical, sensory, developmental or cognitive disabilities. Since 1990 in the United States, the Americans with Disabilities Act has required that the built environment meet the needs of the majority of those with physical disabilities and/ or people who use mobility devices. More recently, 'universal design' has expanded the understanding of accessibility and inclusivity. The autistic and neurodivergent community is one of many underserved disabled communities whose needs are not addressed in ADA standards or in universal design.

Autism and neurodivergence

The term neurodivergent describes someone whose neurocognitive functioning does not align with existing social norms. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder and, within the neurodivergent and 'actually autistic' communities, is considered one of many neurological variations. Occurring in both children and adults throughout the world, it may be more common than originally thought. While the medical community does not know why the occurrence rates of autism in both children and adults are increasing, many researchers confirm that greater awareness, improved case identification and changes in the age of diagnosis, as well as changing diagnostic factors have a significant impact on the occurrence rate.¹

Hypersensitivity to sound is one of the most common sensory processing dysfunctions experienced by autistic people.² In addition to difficulties with social interaction, communication challenges, and engaging in repetitive behaviours, sensory processing disorder is a common symptom of ASD. Recent studies have revealed that autistic people, both adults and children, may share a similar dysfunction in the part of the brain that regulates perception and the integration of complex sounds.³ Within the sensory world of cities, sound may be the most pervasive and impactful sensation for autistic people.

Currently, there is no standard set of design guidelines that addresses the design of the public commons or urban space to accommodate the needs of autistic people. In 2015, Magda Mostafa created the Autism ASPECTSS™ Design Index⁴ which establishes a design framework for architects that seeks to create a standardised treatment of interior space. While the Autism ASPECTSS™ Design Index organises an evidence-based framework for interior spaces, these practices have not been applied in the landscape. The current state of neurodivergent landscape architecture research is focused on private outdoor places for children, such as small-scale horticulture therapy gardens in private healthcare settings, niche residential design and private educational play spaces. While architects and landscape architects have started to understand how autistic children experience and respond to the constructed environment, urban design has not been analysed in order to design places that are sensorially and acoustically accessible to autistic or otherwise neurodivergent people.

Research proposal—Hidden Geographies

Hidden Geographies is a research project proposal that invites autistic or otherwise neurodivergent people to explore the visual, spatial and acoustic qualities of public space via a community-based participatory research process. Autistic people are particularly well-suited to participate in such a research project, and evidence suggests that their inclusion is required for more accurate representation.

In Hidden Geographies, autistic people will explore, via an embodied and sensorial ethnography, the visual, spatial and sonic qualities of public space. Hidden Geographies invites neurotypical designers to enter into the autistic way of knowing, perceiving and embodying place—entering into the hidden geographies of sensation. Designing this ethnographic study to include the body of the researcher and researched as part of the process of inquiry and data collection affords a ‘greater phenomenological sensibility to ethnography’.⁵ These hidden geographies provide critical information for developing new ways to envision urban design. The resultant ethnographic materials constitute a new inventory of the city—representing autistic and neurodivergent ways of knowing and being in the urban environment.

The methods of this proposed community-based ethnographic study are rooted in interviews, field recordings, and sensory and sound mapping. Field recording allows the participants to directly capture acoustic phenomena; sounds that are pleasant or compelling, intriguing and melodic, or frightening and overwhelming. Individual field recordings provide a direct representation of moving through linear time within a site. Visual analysis of sound files offers a new