The RAIC Promoting Equity and Justice Advocacy Committee (PEJ-AC) is pleased to announce they will be hosting a 3-part webinar series on disability issues within the built environment starting this fall.
The first webinar in this series is: The Sum of all Parts: Disability Culture as a key component of Inclusive Design
Guest Speaker: Annie Boivin, Senior Architect, Perkins & Will, and Disability Advocate
Now available on-demand
Description:
"Many non-disabled people attribute a degree of brokenness to disability; it arises from the medicalization of our bodyminds. To be disabled is, in this world, to experience a problem of body and/or mind so severe that it distinguishes a disabled person from a non-disabled person. I learned about my body from figuring out ways to live in my diagnosis. I learned about disability from disability studies, books, and people like Corbett O'Toole and Simi Lindon. My initiation into this world revealed that disability was more than the state of my body" Quote by Alice Sheppard.
This session offers an opportunity to explore our individual and collective relationships to the concept and lived experience of disability. Does the architectural practice hold biases against disability? How is the design process informed by disability culture? Is our current use of accessibility codes and guidelines achieving the results required to produce truly inclusive design solutions? How can disabled lived experiences help us move closer to the ambitious goal of creating more equitable built environments?
Length: 1 hr
Ms. Annie Boivin
Architect AIBC, CPHD
Senior Architect, Perkins & Will
From a very young age, Annie experienced the world through the lens of disability. Unaware that the world around her was a product of design, she assumed the assaults on her disabled identity were a necessary part of life. Fortunately, a chance encounter with a passionate aspiring architecture student will derail the course of her life and encourage her to embark on the journey that will eventually reveal the flaws of her childhood naivety and allow her to explore disability as an essential component of creative practice.
After receiving an undergraduate degree from Laval University in 2006 and a master’s degree from the University of British Columbia in 2011, Annie started her professional career at the Perkins & Will Vancouver studio where she still practices today. In addition to the work she performs as an architect, through a series of design studios, lectures, conference contributions, and research collaborations, Annie investigates the different ways in which ableist believes are informing contemporary practice. Her research also proposes that the knowledge embedded in disability culture can contribute to create a new framework from which inclusive design solutions are generated. Most recently, she contributed to the University of Waterloo’s effort in developing a curriculum built around the intersection of disability and architecture.
Boivin, a licensed architect who has been practicing in Canada for 10 years, naturally takes an accessibility-first approach to her work. How can the design of our built environments empower people who live with disabilities? How can it ensure their independence and self-sufficiency? How can it protect their right to move safely, and freely, from point A to point B?