How can we break down systematic inequalities in urban spaces? How can we build better for everyone?

The Bartlett’s monthly Inclusive Spaces event series explores equity, diversity and inclusion in the built environment.

Join us each month as we delve into the latest research and ideas from The Bartlett’s world-leading thinkers on race, gender, LGBTQ+, disability – and other dimensions of diversity in the built environment.

Upcoming events

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Past events

Rethinking disability and built space

This interactive workshop session will start from the work of disabled artists, designers, campaigners and scholars. We will discuss how engaging with disability at the intersections can be both a creative design generator, and a key means to challenge and change what is ‘normal’ in the design of the built environment.

In architecture and related fields in the built environment, disability as a concept – and disabled people – continue to be predominantly framed through a set of outdated and functionalist categories (wheelchair user, blind, deaf, etc.).

There is still a widespread assumption that ‘disability’ is unable to bring any kind of creativity to the design of human spaces.

Since 2008, the DisOrdinary Architecture Project has been challenging this assumption by promoting new practice for the built environment, led by the creativity and experiences of disabled artists.

By finding innovative and enjoyable ways of bringing together disabled creatives with built environment students, educators, researchers and practitioners, DisOrdinary Architecture is co-developing new forms of valuing, and designing with, the rich bio- and neurodiversity of our many different ways of being in the world.

Recording: Rethinking disability and built space

YouTube Widget Placeholderhttps://youtu.be/4DlPZ1VVIH0

 

About the speakers

• Dr Jos Boys, Senior Lecturer in Environments for Learning, The Bartlett Real Estate Institute & co-director of The DisOrdinary Architecture Project
• Natasha Trotman, Artist in Residence at Somerset House, and a designer whose work explores extending the frontiers of knowledge around mental difference, non-typical ways of being and marginalised experiences. Natasha Trotman's studio practise site
• Raquel Mesquer, founder and Artistic Director of Unchartered Collective, where she develops projects and an aesthetic exploring difference as a creative tool, including 'A Crash Course in Cloudspotting (the subversive act of horizontality)'. https://uncharteredcollective.com/

Re-thinking architecture to create social value

This session will be led by award-winning architect and Bartlett alumna Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows.

In part one, we’ll explore inclusive design methods, and answer key questions: How can architecture enable the voices of underrepresented communities to enable spatial justice? How can architects design for social value creation in places, buildings and neighbourhoods? How can designing inclusive spaces help us respond to the climate injustice? We’ll bring these issues to life with  case study projects from the practise Our Building Design, which enabled marginalised local voices to be heard through community participation and evidence-based research, tackling complex social and environmental issues faced by the disadvantaged communities.

Part two will expose the urgent issue of diversity in the architecture profession. FAME collective is a research-based platform responding to a lack of understanding of how race and gender affect practitioners, young scholars and students in architecture and the built environment. We’ll explore how these professions need to diversify, in order to reflect the diversity of the local communities they are serving.

Recording: Re-thinking architecture to create social value

YouTube Widget Placeholderhttps://youtu.be/LviwOhvVHts

 

About the speaker

Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows is an award-winning British architect, and Bartlett alumna (UCL Architecture BSc 2005, Grad Dip 2008, MArch 2010, RIBA/ARB - Part 3- Professional Practice 2011).

She co-founded the inter-disciplinary practice Our Building Design, the charity Mannan Foundation Trust, and two organisations that promote and support architects from the ethnic minority in the UK: FAME collective and Asian Architects Association. She is also part of the Design Review Panel for the Southwark Council Planning Department.

She is a Senior Lecturer in architecture at the University of Westminster where her teaching draws on her research methodologies on interdisciplinary approach to design.

She is a PhD candidate, her research focuses on community participatory methods on architectural responses to the changing climate, landscape and social practices, in the UK and in Bangladesh.

She was awarded the RIBA-J Rising Star Award in 2017, and a commendation for the RIBA President’s Award for Research in 2019. For her architectural work she has received the SEED / Pacific Rim Community Design Network Award 2018 and Architecture Sans Frontieres Award 2017 commendation.

Are you a UCL academic and interested in presenting at an Inclusive Spaces event? Please contact Nishat Tasnim at n.tasnim@ucl.ac.uk to register your interest.