title: Situating universal design architecture: designing with whom?
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To respond to growing calls for a theoretical unpacking of Universal Design (UD), a disparate movement cohering around attempts to design spaces and technologies that seek to allow use by all people (to the fullest extent possible). The on-going embedding of UD into architectural practice and pedagogy represents an opportune juncture at which to draw learning from other distinct-but-related transformatory architectural movements.
  
  
  METHODS
  Sociological-theoretical commentary.
  
  
  RESULTS
  UD has to date, and necessarily, been dominated by the practice contexts from which it emerged. Appealing as a short-hand for description of "designing-for-all", in most cases UD has come to stand in as a term to signal a general intent in this direction and as an umbrella term for the range of technical design resources that have been developed under these auspices. There remains a fundamental ambivalence vis-à-vis the question of users' power/capacity to influence decision-making in the design process in UD; technically-oriented typologies of bodies predominate in influential UD architectural accounts.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  UD represents rich technical and pedagogical resources for those architects committed to transforming the existing built environment so as to be less hostile to a wide range of users. However, within UD, unpacking the social role of the professional architect vis-à-vis a variety of publics is an important, but hitherto underdeveloped, challenge; issues concerning professional-citizen power relations continue to animate parallel architectural politics, and UD can both contribute and draw much from these on-going explorations. Implications for Rehabilitation Universal Design (UD) architecture shares a close affinity with rehabilitation practice, with the creation of built environments that allow use by individuals with a wide range of capacities a priority for both. While an effective communicative "bridge" between professions, UD's deployment typically leaves unspoken the capacity of users to meaningfully affect decision-making in the design process. UD architecture has much to draw from, and contribute to, parallel movements in "participatory architectural design"; debates therein have illuminated much about the social practices underpinning designing for difference. UD could engage more fully with questions relating to the social and political role of the architect.
authors: Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Liverpool , Liverpool , UK.
authors: Paul
authors: P
authors: Jones
mesh_terms: D001107:Architectural Accessibility; D003256:Community Participation; D003254:Consumer Advocacy; D003657:Decision Making; D004779:Environment Design; D006801:Humans
keywords: Architecture; participation; universal design; users