DisOrdinary Dialogues

What is the value of imperfect design?In this conversation, hosts Mandy and Tom explore concepts of the ‘imperfect’ and imperfect design beauty with three key guests: Jos Boys (DisOrdinary Architecture Co-Director), Grace Choi (Grace Choi Architecture Architect Director) and Nikki Dravers (REfUSE Café Food Partnership Co-ordinator), and contributions from staff and volunteers at the REfUSE Café in Chester Le Street.  As with each episode, this conversation builds on from our recent ‘Many More Parts than M!’ Compendium (launched in early 2024) and explories how we can engage with built environment accessibility in ways that take us beyond conventional checklists and design guidance.Episode Timestamps00:00 Soundbite0:28 Introduction1:15 Jos Boys on the Imperfect Design Principle14:38 Exploration of REfUSE CiC and those involved22:25 Are we in an Inclusion Emergency?32:35 Closing thoughtsTranscript for the conversation here.This episode was recorded and produced by Mandy Redvers-Rowe (Blind Theatre Producer) and Tom Walker (Partially Sighted Sound Engineer) for The DisOrdinary Architecture Project.Find out more about The DisOrdinary Architecture Project here. ‘The first compendium mentioned was ‘Many More Parts than M!’ from DisOrdinary Architecture. You can access the compendium here.The second book mentioned was Inclusion Emergency: Diversity in Architecture. Written by Grace choi and Hannah Durham. You can access the book here.

What is shared space? And can it work for everyone?In this conversation hosts Mandy and Tom explore ideas of (Un)Shared Spaces with five key guests: Zoe Partington (Co-Director, The DisOrdinary Architecture Project and CEO, DaDa), Denise Kennedy, (Access Co-ordinator, DaDa), Andrew de Silva (Director and Architect, David Miller Architects), Chithra Marsh (Director, Buttress), Kimberley Corrall (Associate, Buttress) and architectural students Thomas Lockley and Abbey Brady-Hoyle. As with each episode, this conversation builds on from our recent ‘Many More Parts than M!’ Compendium (launched in early 2024) and explories how we can engage with built environment accessibility in ways that take us beyond conventional checklists and design guidance. Find out more about the compendium here.Episode Timestamps00:00 Introduction01:12 Understanding ‘shared spaces’ with Zoe Partington07:36 Explorations of RIBA North and shared spaces in the design process20:26 Inclusion of ‘accessible design’ in architecture studies29:01 Explorations of RIBA North and shared spaces in the design process30:56 Closing thoughtsTranscript for the conversation here.This episode was recorded and produced by Mandy Redvers-Rowe (Blind Theatre Producer) and Tom Walker (Partially Sighted Sound Engineer) for The DisOrdinary Architecture Project.Find out more about The DisOrdinary Architecture Project here.

Disability Meets Architecture is a co-created podcast miniseries, enabling conversations that cross boundaries between architecture, Disability studies and related disciplines; and across theory and practice beyond the conventions of conventional access.Each conversation featured in Disability Meets Architecture draws on a different productive friction and places two activists, architects, designers, writers or artists in dialogue. This ‘project intro’ with Jos Boys (The DisOrdinary Architecture Project) and Aimi Hamraie (Critical Design Lab) takes place at the Round Tower, Rundetårn, in Copenhagen. It was recorded just as we were planning the series when Jos and Aimi found themselves in the city at the same time.This tower, completed in 1642 for Christian IV of Denmark, features an equestrian ramp which would enable a horse and carriage to rise 34.8m to the observatory at the top. This ramp is not accessible under design guidance. However, it highlights how a design feature, often associated with access, is reimagined as desirable, going as far as displacing the staircase as the primary way to move vertically up this 17th C. tower. It shows how thinking differently about how we move through space, beyond the human, beyond the upright human, can create different forms of pleasurable architecture.Aimi Hamraie (they/them) is the founder and director of Critical Design Lab, a multi-disciplinary and multi-institution arts and design collaborative rooted in disability culture. Aimi is author of Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability (University of Minnesota Press, 2017) and host of the Contra* podcast on disability and design. They are a 2022 United States Artists Fellow, Canada Research Chair in Technology, Society, and Disability and Associate Professor of Social Science at York University.Jos Boys (she/her) is the founder and co-director of The DisOrdinary Architecture Project with Zoe Partington. Jos was also part of Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative in the late 1970s and 80s in the UK. Through her work, Jos has co-authored and acted as editor/co-editor on a number of books including Disability, Space, Architecture: A Reader (2017), Doing Disability Differently: An alternative handbook on architecture, dis/ability and designing for everyday life (2014) and Making Space: Women and the Man Made Environment by Matrix (1984/2022). Jos is an Honorary Associate Professor at UCL (UK), and served as a Guest Professor at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen (2022–2025).A film accompanies this episode and is available on both DisOrdinary and Critical Design Lab’s websites.Transcript here: https://disordinaryarchitecture.co.uk/s/DMA-intro-Transcript.pdf____DMA is brought to you by The DisOrdinary Architecture Project and Critical Design Lab, with this miniseries funded by The Graham Foundation.Your hosts are Aimi Hamraie and Jos Boys, with Scar Barclay and Paul DeFazio supporting the series production. Ilana Nevins is our editor, with Scar finalising edits for the DisOrdinary Architecture version.Find out more about this project and related projects at disordinaryarchitecture.co.uk and criticaldesignlab.com.Find out more about Aimi’s work here: Websites: aimihamraie.com criticaldesignlab.com labsforliberation.orgFind out more about Jos’s work here: Websites: josboys.co.uk disordinaryarchitecture.co.uk matrixfeministarchitecturearchive.co.uk