“The Architecture of Disability”

In this presentation, David Gissen will outline a few key concepts from his new book, The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities and Landscapes Beyond Access (University of Minnesota Press, 2022). Disability critiques of architecture usually emphasize the need for modification and increased access, but The Architecture of Disability calls for a radical reorientation of this perspective by situating experiences of impairment as a new foundation for the built environment. With its provocative proposal for “the construction of disability,” this book fundamentally reconsiders how we conceive of and experience disability in our world.

David Gissen is an author and designer based in New York City. He is Professor of Architecture and Urban History at Parsons School of Design/The New School and a visiting professor at Columbia GSAPP. In addition to The Architecture of Disability, he is the author of the books Subnature (2009) and Manhattan Atmospheres (2013).

V. Mitch McEwen is an Assistant Professor at Princeton’s School of Architecture. She is principal of Atelier Office, director of the Black Box Research Group, and co-founder of the Black Reconstruction Collective.

Beatriz Colomina is the Howard Crosby Butler Professor of the History of Architecture. Her most recent books are X-Ray Architecture (Lars Muller, 2019)and Radical Pedagogies, ed. with Ignacio Gonzalez Galan, Evangelos Kotsioris, and Anna-Maria Meister (MIT Press, 2022).

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