Universal Design: Emily Post for Buildings

Laura Claridge has just published a biography on Emily Post. To the delight of fans, Emily Post was quite the woman living in quite the time. To her detractors, Emily Post is still no more than an arbiter of manners including the extended pinky finger while quietly sipping tea.

It was in 1922 that Emily Post wrote her famous guide to social etiquette. Some people now perceive it as an obsolete set of behavioral rules for people in high society. However, this interpretation misses its theme: the promotion of core values like consideration, thoughtfulness, and kindness. It is also misses the personal benefits of good manners, which include confidence, self-respect, and an instinctual feeling that one is doing the right thing. Following an outward set of behavioral rules enables us to fulfill our inward human need of belonging and being a member of a society. What has changed since Post first published her guidebook is the prescribed behavior. What hasn’t changed are the fundamental core values behind the manners.

Whereas etiquette provides guidelines for person-to-person, universal design provides guidelines for the environments we occupy and the tools we use; it is environment-to-person (or to product). No longer will building just be about shelter, function or good looks. Universal design brings etiquette to how your home is crafted. A home or community that applies these guidelines is one that is inviting and welcoming to all; it is a well-mannered house. It is a house that fulfills that need of human belonging. No longer is one shut out because an “ignorant” building unfairly impedes entry due to a limitation in physical ability.

Konrad Kaletsch
January 22, 2009
http://www.universaldesignresource.com/

Universal Design: Destination or Journey?

One day, there will be the ultimate universal design handbook. It will have well conceived answers to every design quandary, each achieved cost effectively and with elegance.

No. That would be as if universal design was a destination, a place we arrive at where solutions were the intention of its creation. This notion that a checklist can be created pervades the present consciousness of legislators and building inspectors alike. We will have measures by which we can recognize the effectiveness of our solutions, however, what brings us closer is when universal design is understood as a journey.

Universal design gives a place from which to look. It is our starting point and it is our compass. As we travel, we find that we have come further and that there is more to go. But to imagine that we arrive is to fall back to a notion that it could become a set of solutions, and that we must conform to them. That would assure that universal design could never be more than a trend, never more than a set of laws that some day gets trashed as disappointment by a future generation.

Universal design is a crackle of possibility seeking expression. It is an opportunity of liberation. It is a willingness to get a lesson thus far not learned. It is a letting go of old thought.

The promise of universal design is inclusiveness. As such, it represents a shift in consciousness more than a recipe. It represents a shift away from a thinking that is rooted in fear, doubt, worry and anxiety. It moves from scarcity to abundance; from stingy to generous; from me to us, from excluded to included. Universal design is an expression of compassion, and, compassion gives us true peace.