Accessible Construction
Accessible construction a luxury?
Accessible construction is commonly used in relation to people with some restriction. Barriers, as I want to define them, are more comprehensive.
The standard person, who is often used to carry out planning tasks, is male, 33 years old, 100% healthy, fully employed, owns his own car and lives in a partnership in which the female partner takes over the care work. In other words, she is responsible for housework, child-rearing and care, e.g. for the elderly, etc.
If this standard person, his everyday life and his needs are used as the basis and requirements profile in architecture, urban, spatial and transport planning, the needs of this standard person are primarily taken into account and included in the corresponding rooms. The needs of other people who do not fall into this grid are only marginally or not taken into account at all.
You can see that a lot of people fall out of the grid of the standard person and also not all 33-year-old men meet this grid.
For me, barrier-free planning and construction encompasses the whole spectrum of people and takes special account of the population groups, which are not yet taken into account at the moment.
For me, barrier-free construction means taking all people into account – in their diversity and in the changeability of their needs over the course of a lifetime – when planning, building and maintaining everything that is built and planned.