this is a design project
this is an inclusive design project
this is an inclusive design project for people of all ages
this is an inclusive design project for people of all ages and abilities
this is an ever-evolving radically accessible wildly engaging architectural and urban design project
why ‘radically accessible wildly engaging’?
Designing for older adults and designing radical, engaging places are not mutually exclusive.
Rather than a hospital-like aesthetic and support-focused approach, what if our environment supported us, challenged us, and engaged us? Imagine this leading to fewer falls, reduced “bedblocking” in hospitals, less isolation and loneliness. Imagine this generating homes that adapt to our needs and desires over time, intergenerational public spaces that foster community, mobility networks that allow us to get where we want to go. There is valuable time, knowledge, and experience to be shared across and between generations that comes with social and economic benefits to society. Currently, societal norms create physical separations that segregate us by age but we have a great deal to gain from integration.
Inclusive environments are places that all people of all ages can access. If we consider the life we want for our future selves, is the environment accessible enough to allow us to truly live it? Accessibility is too often associated with bland, clinical environments, while engaging, exciting environments are often critiqued for prioritising form over a user’s ability to function. The best places consider both form and function — accessibility not only in terms of physical access, but also cognitive and sensory access and social access so we can stay engaged with our community.
We need our environment to work for us in order to live our life. We also need places that make us feel good, that go above and beyond minimum standards to let us live our greatest quality of life. This is why radical accessibility is important — it reframes the low expectations we have for “age-friendly”, accessible environments and challenges us to consider what radical accessibility can look and feel like. Accessible architecture can be awesome architecture, intergenerational urban spaces can be amazing places. Radical accessibility makes room for more people to enjoy wildly engaging places, programs, public life and private life.
We can learn from our diversity to design inclusive communities that empower people of all ages and abilities. It is not ‘one size fits all’, it is ‘one size fits one’. Considering and responding to this design challenge is how we can create radically accessible and wildly engaging environments.
why ‘project’?
Projects exist to meet a specific goal. Ideally, radically accessible, wildly engaging inclusive design is embedded into the way we shape our environments — until then, this project is ongoing.
About RAWE
RAWE Project researches, reviews, and reimagines how we design our environment to realize more radically accessible and wildly engaging choices for how we live, work, and play. RAWE Project collaborates with all built environment stakeholders from developers and designers to community members and policy makers in order to to learn, share, and create design that enables and empowers people of all ages.
RAWE Project is led by Carly Dickson, a designer, researcher and advocate focused on creating and promoting equitable experiences of radically accessible wildly engaging environments for people of all ages. Carly is an Access and Inclusive Environments Consultant at Arup and co-leads a Design Think Tank at the London School of Architecture. Carly previously worked at the Royal College of Art on the Design Age Institute’s team as a Knowledge Exchange Fellow, sharing the Institute’s work and supporting new opportunities to collaboratively create more desirable products, services, and environments that enable healthy and happy ageing. Prior to the Design Age Institute, Carly worked across various design and research roles, most recently as an architectural designer at Alison Brooks Architects and as the co-author and designer of the book Just Living: Homes for Our Future Selves. She has also worked as a design researcher for the MIT AgeLab and an inclusive design consultant for Motionspot. Carly graduated with a Masters in Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2017 and a B.A. in Architectural Theory from Harvard College in 2012.
Carly, as a Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Certification Professional (RHFAC), can conduct RHFAC accessibility surveys of existing buildings and pre-construction drawings of design proposals. She is committed to finding the most desirable accessible design ideas for existing and proposed buildings and spaces. Her experience working in architecture enables her to creatively support design teams during the design process, ideally from the very beginning in order to build inclusive design principles into the project from the start rather than bolt them on at the end.
Interested in researching, reviewing, reimagining or realizing radically accessible wildly engaging design?
Let’s chat: carlydickson@raweproject.com
Does our purpose and projects resonate with you? Looking for any of inclusive design, access auditing, lifetime home design consultancy services? We’d love to hear from you.
Let’s chat!
Carly Dickson
cdickson@mit.edu
+44 (0) 7480 782089