It has been a while since architects have been attempting to address various forms of disability in the buildings, neighborhoods and cities they design. However, these attempts are most often limited to increasing access for differently abled bodies. Our guest today, David Gissen, argues that a disability critique of architecture is not one that solely seeks to make the built environment more accessible but instead understands how embedded the ideas of physical incapacity and impairment are within architecture.
David Gissen is a New York-based author, designer, and educator who works in the fields of architecture, landscape, and urban design. His recent book, The Architecture of Disability, has been praised as “an exhilarating manifesto” and a “complete reshaping about how we view the development and creation of architecture.” He is Professor of Architecture and Urban History at The New School University/Parsons School of Design and Dean’s Visiting Professor at Columbia University.
David’s website: https://davidgissen.org/
References:
- The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber and David Wengrow- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything
Transcript
Vaissnavi Shukl
The discourse on disability in architecture is not a new one. It has been a while since architects have been attempting to address various forms of disability in the buildings, neighbourhoods and cities they design. However, these attempts are most often limited to increasing access for differently abled bodies. With the support of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, our guest today is David Gissen, professor of Architecture and Urban History at the Parsons School of Design. David argues that a disability critique of architecture is not one that solely seeks to make the built environment more accessible, but instead it is one that understands how embedded the ideas of physical capacity and impairment are within architecture.
I am Vaissnavi Shukl and this is Architecture Off-Centre, a podcast where we discuss contemporary discourses that shape the built environment, but do not occupy the centre stage in our daily lives. We speak to radical designers, thinkers and change makers who are deeply engaged in redefining the way we live and interact with the world around us.
We are of course here to talk about your work and your recently published book, ‘The Architecture of Disability’. But before we do that, I want to talk a little bit about you and how your work reflects your experience as an architect, as an architecture student in the past and now of course, an academic and a scholar.
David Gissen
Yeah, so I am a disabled designer, author, disabled person since I was 16. I’m from the first generation of paediatric cancer survivors of osteogenic sarcoma, bone cancer in the United States. And so I went through architecture school, graduate school positions as a curator, as a PhD student, and as an academic for the past 20 years as a disabled person, within the discipline of architecture. So I think a lot of my perspectives, draw on those experiences, and it’s something that I’ve felt more comfortable writing about and discussing and lecturing about teaching about in recent years, but it’s something that’s always informed my work and something that I’ve always reflected on throughout my journey, and in architecture.
Vaissnavi Shukl
This might be a little personal so please let me know if you don’t want to answer it. But architecture education is infamous for how physically demanding it gets, both in terms of studio work, but also how interlinked it is with being on sites or you know, just doing all your field research and your internship and stuff. How was it for you to navigate the journey of studying architecture?
David Gissen
Yeah, it was difficult. When I was an undergraduate school, I walked on crutches and was in a wheelchair. For about half of the years I was in architecture schools and undergrad. So this was before I became an amputee, in my junior year of undergraduate so it was very difficult. In fact, you know, I remember working in studio with my sitting on a stool, and a drafting desk, which is what the setup was like back then and one of my legs would be under the desk just like anybody else. And my other leg, which was in a cast at the time, was sort of stretched out on an adjacent stool. And, you know, it was difficult but I managed and, and there actually also, two experiences from that time that one reflect on one was a group of people in the university who I can’t remember what the office was called, but um, we’re really extraordinarily supportive of me remaining in school and did everything they could to find me. accessible facilities and classrooms and other things that I could use more easily. This is before the Americans with Disability Act, so these must have either been covered by laws in the state I was living in or what’s called Section 504, which was a law that preceded the Americans with Disability Act and guaranteed that institutions that receive federal funding, provided facilities that disabled people could use. Okay, so that was one set of experiences which were fantastic. Another set of experiences were more incidental, just things like professors in particular saying, “Are you really sure you want to go into this profession?” Or who would watch me the way I was sitting up at the studio desk, obviously made them more psychologically uncomfortable than it made me physically comfortable? And we’ll make comments about like, you know, maybe, maybe you should be an architectural historian and not an architect because that’ll be easier to do, or be less intense on me. So, to those kinds of conversations, I definitely got two different sets of messages. One, transformations can be made in education, so that expanding access, so to speak, to architectural education, another group who felt that being an architect was ultimately about having certain kinds of physical capacities, and I didn’t that standard. So that made a very big impression on me. I don’t and I think, I think in ways that I’m still kind of coming to grips with in some ways, I mean, you don’t forget experiences like that. And those are some of the more polite ones that I’m mentioning are of course others. Yeah, so that was difficult. And then, you know, of course, when you actually start working at a firm you have the kinds of things that you have to do as an intern, you know, as a fresh graduate or as a summer intern at an architecture office in terms of..
Vaissnavi Shukl
Which is just basically running around.
David Gissen
Yeah, but again, you know, I had different kinds of experiences. I worked for somebody whose child was actually very seriously disabled. A very prominent architect here in New York City, when I was an undergraduate, and he and his firm were remarkable in terms of making a place for me to work there was amazing experiences at the time was considered one of the most important architectural firms in New York City, it was Gwathmey Siegel, and worked very close with Charles Gwathmey, who was one of the New York five and had a lot of experiences with the kinds of things that I was going through via his own children. One of his children, excuse me. So that was an amazing experience. But again, you know, there were other experiences that were very different. I think all of this has informed how I behave relative to my students as a professor, so it’s not just that I try to make you know the classroom or the studios where I teach are the things that I do, quote unquote, accessible. That’s easy. What I tried to do is restructure the entire studio experience for students through my own lens and make some kind of space or a way of teaching and working around architectural problems or architectural sites that draws on different kinds of capacities that people have and very much draws on my own in capacities, okay, so for example, with a group of graduate students at the height of COVID, who were feeling all kinds of anxieties about the pandemic, instead of pin ups, we had what we call place downs, where we would sit at the desk and just have a somewhat more physically relaxed atmosphere around discussing each other’s work especially with like these, you know, masks on our face and the kind of you know, this is this is some of the first in person teaching as the pandemic began to wind down at 2021 and 22. So, you know, so those kinds of experiences are not just important for me as a disabled professor, but they’re important for my students, because they understand that you know, there’s what we expect of architects physically, psychologically, can be far more complex. And now what I’m noticing and what’s fantastic, is that these efforts are enabling students don’t necessarily think they have a place in architectural education. So right now I have students with you know, the wide range of impairments or disabilities who are taking studios with me, and I think they are having life changing experiences and what is very, very different than the ones that I had when I was a student. So that’s, that’s important. Yeah.
Vaissnavi Shukl
Thank you for sharing that. Because I also come from, you know, the school of thought or the history of architecture education, which has a lot to do with making you know, the Arts and Crafts movement. And in our first year, we had a course called Basic Design. Which was like a very rigorous course. And one of the professor’s made it clear on like day one of freshman year first year, that there’s no room for you to be sick, let alone have anything happen to your limbs. In case you ever fall sick just pop a pill but show up in the studio. It was laid out on grounds like there’s no room for you to be sick, like forget about being sick. There’s no space for that. And of course, the way the building is designed. It’s a wonderful building designed by Pritzker Prize winner BV Doshi School of Architecture. But one of the critiques of the building is it’s not and we’ll get to the question of accessibility. It doesn’t make room for people who somebody who’s even like in studio fallen down and like hurt a limb or something. You’d question: How do I get that person who has like a knee fracture or something up to the studio? So it was a space I think, overall in the studio atmosphere in India, it’s just there’s no room to fall sick and then of course, I end up going to grad school in the US and at the GSD in university. While there are questions about accessibility, there’s questions about making room making space for people who have different kinds of ailments or just going through different experiences as people who are not able as a healthy human being is quote, unquote, “design”. But we’ll get to your book now because I love you frame it and of course the title is called ‘The Architecture of Disability’ but I found the subtitle of your book very, very interesting and it says you’re looking at “Building cities and landscape beyond access”. Now, of course, the default manner in which we talk about disability and architecture is directly related to how we can provide or increase access to the spaces and cities for design and build but that is precisely what you’re not doing in the book. You’re in fact critically looking at the history of the disabled people’s relationship to the buildings to the cities and kind of pushing it way beyond the functionalist approach of maybe just like designing ramps.
David Gisse
Yeah, when I teach studio, I have a prohibition against ramps and any project. If you’re concerned about wheelchair access, just like a one storey building, I was, you know, you know, there’s 15,000 years of history where the one storey buildings you can draw it.
Vaissnavi Shukl
And I want to also probably if we can also address we can talk about the cover of your book and I heard the lecture given I think it was UCL Bartlett where you’re talking about the three staircases and how they have been very skillfully adapted and graphically represented as the cover of the book to kind of present three different approaches to how we really look at circulation or movement.
David Gissen
Yeah, so the origin of this book is complex. I mean, obviously, part of the book’s memoir comes from my own experiences, but the vast majority of the book is history and theory. I’ve talked architectural and history and theory, you know, my entire career. There’s a few things I’ve always wondered about. You know, do I however immodest and as this may sound, have my own kind of theory of architecture, my own kind of set of beliefs about the kinds of traditional subjects that are an architectural theory, ideas about history, ideas about cities, and urbanisation ideas about aesthetics, ideas about construction, and today more and more ideas about nature and environment. So that was one question. And the other I think, emerged from teaching history and theory so much and being fairly familiar with some big themes, just how much of a role let’s call it impairment and disability, impairment and capacity but also capacity and physical strength figure in in people’s ideas about historical experience, ideas about urbanisation ideas about aesthetics. Certainly ideas about construction, and, and it’s about an environment and the capacities of nature. My ultimate argument, I think, in the book, is that a disability critique of architecture is not one that simply seeks to make the built environment more accessible, but one that comes to terms and understanding with how embedded ideas of physical capacity, incapacity, weakness and impairment are within the disciplines language. And this, you know, I don’t want to claim this as a universal . I mean, I think the book very much comes to terms as a lot of work does lately with a kind of canon of figures that I was introduced to as a student, it’s central the discipline. So this book does the work of so that continues many other different people’s work and perspective of sort of wrestling with that and, and pushing back against some of the ideas. But it also draws on a far more global range of thinkers, particularly things that are extremely important to architectural thought right now like voices from from anti and quote unquote decolonial perspectives, as well as relatively recent work that’s looking at ideas of race, but also gender and sort of bringing my own critiques into dialogue and alignment. With some of the points from those other thinkers. So, for me, I want to be really clear like I need to move and exist and work in a quote unquote, accessible world. That’s very important to me. And that’s very important to other disabled people, and there’s a lot more work to be done in that area. However, I don’t think the appointments, the perspective of access or inaccessibility is enough, and we need to have a more thorough rethinking of many, many, many aspects of our architectural discipline, education and practice. And I think this book begins to do that work, at least from again, from their perspective of disability.
Vaissnavi Shukl
I got to read a couple of excerpts from what was available on Amazon because I can’t unfortunately order the book. It’s not available in the Indian Amazon store right now. But I did find…
David Gissen
We have to do something about that.
Vaissnavi Shukl
I found a couple of familiar names. I saw that a little do can I saw the old people there the usuals but then what I also found interesting was picking up some of these fake classic examples and offering a very nuanced reading of those plays. For example, there’s an image of people walking up to the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, and it not only has to do with a journey but also metaphorically where it’s placed and the journey one has to do to get to the top of it. I wonder if you want to talk about any of the particular instances or examples from the book that you enjoy the most writing about or something that you relate to the most?
David Gissen
Yeah, well, we can talk about that. First of all, I apologise on behalf of the publisher. And we’ll also have to get you a copy of the book, of course, so I apologise, I shouldn’t have had the publisher do that beforehand. Yeah, so the Acropolis example is a good one. And it relates to a lot of things we’re talking about. So 10 years ago, maybe longer than that, maybe more like 15 years ago. Now. I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Athens and like any architecture student, one of the first things I wanted to see was the Acropolis and buildings at the top, the Parthenon, the ark and the proper layer. I arrived in Athens, I went with my partner and walked to the park on the bottom and I took the ascent to the top on the famous path designed by Dimitri pick Jonas and the 1950s. And it made me angry, to be honest, I just knew this path was a recent addition to the Acropolis. It was something made in the 1950s but the amount of like athleticism that was built both into the path but also its aesthetics really angered me. So you you you go through this scrubby landscape and, and it’s something that many, many people kind of celebrate as one of the high points of Athenian, I mean, Greek, late modern architecture, up these very slippery marble pavers and there’s trees around that provide a little bit of shade but not very much and then the path gets steeper and steeper until finally, he designed this very narrow, essentially, instead of, you know, staircase, essentially, although most people probably call it a path that leads you single file to the proper layer, where there’s more steps and so forth. And then those steps are reconstructed remnants of the Roman additions to the Acropolis from 2000 years ago. So that was irritating, but what made me more frustrated was that on the way down and then subsequently visiting the Acropolis Museum, that’s adjacent to the Acropolis at its face, there are models of the Acropolis over time, and one of them shows a model the Acropolis. 500 years ago that shows these gently sloping ramps they used to lead you into the entrance. As you know, maybe many of your listeners know the entire site is kind of going through this very extensive quasi reconstruction process to retain some sense of what it was like 2500 years ago. It’s been going you know, this process has been going on for more than a century and a half really involves removing all the traces of the Ottoman buildings and other things from the site and removing and dismantling some of the Roman structures as well. So it’s this entire project about reconstructing what this was like in the past, but the idea that anything related to the ramp will be reconstructed seems absurd. And so then the question is, why is that? And so, I think, and what I write about, is that one of the things that’s kind of built into one’s path design is the idea that the experience of the past or of the archaeological authenticity was built around forms of physical intense intensity in the people that experienced these things. So in other words, Lancome we have an authentic experience of a site like this if one goes through some kind of arduous, physically arduous and ultimately exhausting experience. This is an idea from a European Romanticist who thought that really kind of British and German language writing has nothing to do with anything related to the history of the site. So that says other things that you know, the site is what it is, and it’s difficult, but the site also has an idea built into it. That’s from the 19th century, reinforced in the 20th about how one experiences history and who even has the ability to do that, Athens hosted the Olympics 20 years ago or so. And when you host the Olympics, you also host the Paralympics the Olympic sports for disabled athletes and and any of the sites that are created for the festivities around the Olympics have to be accessible, so they were forced to install an accessible elevator, I mean, an elevator to get to the top of the Acropolis. And it’s basically like a modified construction elevator. That was the most rickety thing. It was one of the options that I can take to get to the top.
Vaissnavi Shukl
Is it still here or was it just there for the Paralympics?
David Gissen
I’m getting there. I’m getting there. So you could take it to the top but when you look at it, or I feel like many people would look at that and think like, there’s no way I’m gonna take that elevator to the top, it looks more dangerous than at least from my perspective than what I may experience on the pet. There’s been protests against that in subsequent years. This reached a crescendo about three years ago when a group of children who were in wheelchairs, went to the Acropolis and couldn’t use the elevator, because this kind of public pure and so in the past two years, they rebuilt that elevator into something much more grand and even went so far as to instal really kind of large scale concrete paving around the top to enable people to better move around the site. But all of that is controversial, because it’s transforming the hydrology of the site. There’s a very reasonable argument to be made, that is made sorry by archaeologists, and the preservation is working on the site. But what does it mean to increase access to a site that’s so archaeologically fragile? You know, there’s all kinds of intersecting debates and there’s no easy solution to any of this. I’m not proposing that there is. However, the discourse of like authenticity in this context needs to really be thought about more critically and I would argue that disabled people, and even people like myself, who are very familiar with preservation discourse, can offer perspectives and ideas about restoration and reconstruction, from a disability perspective that begin to like obviate questions about like whether things are inaccessible or inaccessible and introduce all kinds of other questions. So sorry, I’m going on and on. But I was lucky enough, a few years ago, to be invited to team up with an archaeologist, a Greek archaeologist, and a classical art historian to develop some very small scale artefacts, but that began to be interventions into this discussion. And visibility and access to the Acropolis. And those were exhibited at the Hashem circuses, Venice Biennale, I guess in the Arson Ali Gallery, I think that was in 2021. So just very quickly, the surviving archaeological record tells us that the people that went to the top after going up these ramps, there was a seat that was very prominently displayed, and for obvious reasons, because you’re tired after this journey. And so nothing of it survives. So that was one of the artefacts that we reconstructed. We reconstructed it three different ways and nobody knows what it looks like. And then also, there were some other artefacts adjacent to it that engaged themes of impairment and violence, actually, and that have never been reconstructed. So we reconstructed those and we also did a very kind of unusual non visual reconstruction of the ramp, you know, none of these artefacts have to actually be at the Acropolis to be experienced. But they offer another perspective and ideas about impairment, disability reconstruction and the history of sites like that.
Vaissnavi Shukl
It’s something that again, is very, I think, relevant to the Indian context is you mentioned the artist’s journey one has to make to get to the top and that’s often the case with a lot of religious pilgrimage sites in India. A lot of Jain temples most often you’ll find Jain temples located on peaks of mountains, and one would have to climb. I don’t know if I know one of them has like 45,000 steps and only steps. A couple of temples in the south you have to walk like people start walking up the mountain at 4am-5am in the morning to get there by 9:10am. But it’s also I think, a very integral part of the pilgrimage journey that people have to make so that you know you have to work yourself to reach to God kind of narrative, but of course, even one could look at that also a lot of pilgrimage sites in up north in the mountains in the Himalayas has their entire economies based on transportation where of course, loads of older people when they go to visit, they’re not able to climb so you’d have pallet Queen bearers who literally two of them along the bamboo pole will carry you will lock you up to the mountain and then you have all sorts of like animals lugging you up to the mountain. But I think just looking at the way you’re looking at it, a lot of people could also make an argument for an entire economy that thrives on places, which were designed to provide that kind of an uphill journey. I’ve never thought about it that way. I’m just now guessing that maybe that’s what was kind of common with older civilizations. You know, you have to work your way up and they are always located on the top or something, especially Indian temples. There’ll be some very important temples located in a place which is very difficult to get to.
Vaissnavi Shukl
I mean, I hope it graduates into religion but it for sure has all the markings of being a fabulous cult.
David Gissen
We would worship cool temperatures and darker spaces where our bodies would be very different than the vision of like a Christian church.
Vaissnavi Shukl
We already have a manifesto see there.
David Gissen
Right, right, beginning right. Next project, what it was gonna say. But it turns out there’s an example in the book. I don’t get too into it, but it’s briefly mentioned, but the Basilica St. Denis, sort of in the suburbs of Paris that was famous while that was an important essential pilgrimage site, and one of the directors I guess you’d say, of the Basilica and in 13th century, wrote notes and reflections about the number of impaired worshipers they can and how difficult it was to watch their kind of struggles to touch the relics and the church. And he then goes on to describe the kinds of transformations that were made to the church not just for the sake of these people, but to be more amenable to large crowds of pilgrims. So, again, back to something I was mentioning earlier, one can find histories of incapacity throughout the history of architecture, but church is considered one of the birthplaces of Gothic architecture. And this person is a critical figure in the person who wrote these reflections I’m talking about and that story.
Vaissnavi Shukl
I also want to talk about something we spoke about when we first spoke about the interview. And that has to do with the use and the idea of the word care. And because this season, we are broadly working with these three words and we’ve spoken to somebody who’s looking at the history of care infrastructures and care typologies. I found it very surprising when you say that the word care sometimes acts as a trigger for a lot of people who are disabled. Can you elaborate on that?
David Gissen
Yeah. So I used to think I was alone in this but it turns out that I’m not sure. So in disability studies, there’s a subset I would say that talks about kind of communities of care and issues of self care and cultures of care. A lot of that writing is actually written by people who are not disabled, who view themselves as caregivers, they have children who are disabled or a partner or spouse who’s disabled, who they’re cared for. Often, you know, these stories don’t end well. Obviously, some of them are very tragic about how people care for people at the end of their life. I think among those of us who have been very seriously impaired since we were children, the issue of cares is more complex, because care has often been used as a kind of leveraged, institutionalised us, okay, so something very important I can maybe talk about a little bit more at length once I just kind of give you a summary of my thoughts. So that’s an issue that care has been kind of leveraged as a way to us to basically say like, you need care, and that becomes a form of power. Some of us have had struggles, the very people that are the that are centred in those discussions of care and disability studies, all of a sudden struggles with our parents, who may see our lives as disabled people taking a very different direction than the lives we want for ourselves, thinking about issues around independence, our sexual lives, you know, whatever. The things that we need as independent people, particularly younger people, and then there’s the kinds of subtle forms of discourse around aid that many disabled people find belittling throughout their lives, and in which care and aid become ways to argue that disabled people have in capacities that need to be sort of coddled, right. I used to think I was alone and being sceptical. Actually, that’s a very nice word being outraged discourse around care and disability. But I was having a conversation recently with a group of very prominent disability scholars, some of whom are disabled, some of them are not, and it was interesting that the other disabled people at the table said they very much agreed with the kinds of concerns that I have the care is a can be a frightening term for them and precisely for the reasons that I’ve just mentioned their struggles, trying to have independence, their struggles with the institutionalisation, the struggles with their parents and their struggles today as people who don’t see themselves as needing help, but having a different perspective to bring on what it means to be human being, and I don’t know if care makes much of a space for that right. Now. So that’s an, you know, that’s an interesting question when disabled people, so the retort is, well, disabled people have been protected, practising communities of care. Well, it’s an interesting question when I and then let’s say a fellow amputee, like teach each other how to run, are we caring for each other? I would argue that the experience is more like, just like anybody else. Any other athlete. We’re competing with each other, where we’re struggling against each other’s relative capacities. And in capacities. I don’t think it doesn’t feel like care, but it feels good. And it feels like something I want. So I think those of us who have dealt with these impairments, very serious ones throughout our whole life, have a lot to discuss when it comes to these ideas about caregiving. And while they do say what we think I’m not saying it’s an absolute, but they how they may appear to do us a disservice at times. And again, I don’t want to be extreme. Like, I understand how important this topic is. And in many other contexts, I don’t want to be completely dismissive. I’m just saying in this very specific context, the context of disability and the very cultural context of the United States. It had some implications that are frightening.
Vaissnavi Shukl
Could you think from that as an able bodied person and you know, you don’t often think of yourself as an able bodied person unless you’re talking about the other which is disabled in discourses which exist right now. In academics or otherwise there is that othering of disability as a group that needs to be accounted for or a group that is different from you, as in you know, as designers we are designing for the disabled, of course, sometimes, as a designer, you might have had an experience most times you’ve not, in your opinion, what do you think are some of the ways in which there could be a healthy flow of information or what are some of the ways in which a dialogue or support system could be set up where the other end could be minimised?
David Gissen
The context in which I operate which is architecture and art and architecture schools, right. So I work. I think the answer is very simple. We need more disabled people teaching, leading in school forming, studying architecture. And I think once you do that, then it’s no longer an issue of othering. You know, it’s just like any other kinds of claims that need to be made for representation in our field. This is, you know, it’s so important and so, you know, on sound grounded grandiose, but I think I’m in a relatively lucky position, you know, things could be better, but I’m in a relatively lucky position. So I see it as a responsibility for myself to kind of make some space, you know, not just for me, but for other people that enter this profession or to study architectural history or to be involved with architecture that have not, and that includes disabled people includes many, many other kinds of, you know, many, many other people as well. So that’s really important to me, and things change, you know, immediately when you see that perspective, and I think a lot of the absurdities that come out of previous engagements with disabled people in architecture school go away. So for example, I recently saw videos that were taken by students in a studio about about access, in which at the end of the semester they were carrying an eight foot long model down six storeys of stairs and nothing like how is the studio about it was, this is one of the I mean, what’s so interesting is this is this is this studio was engaging, in many ways the topic of disability which was great, but at the same time, to your point, it’s so other in a way because the like how could experiences impairment even enter into that process, which I’m sure it was not unique to this. It’s not unique to that studio, of course, like these kinds of things happen over and over again. So yeah, I mean, there’s other things that many other people have discussed. And we’ve been talking for a long time. So one of the ways that disability is other typically architectural education is by inviting students to quote unquote, experienced disability. So, in the past, you know, professors will have students that are in a wheelchair put on a blindfold or put on headphones, so they experienced what it’s like to be somebody in a wheelchair, a deaf person, a blind person, that is not let me just make this very clear. That is not what is not the chief experience of being a disabled person. You know, I think my chief experience of a disabled person is the fear of many people that have very serious impairments is an economic ruin. I mean, the amount of money that we spend is just one of many examples to buy things like prosthetics or to have certain kinds of forms of medical care so extreme so that you know if you want to know what it’s like to be a disabled person, pay a $30,000 medical bill, if you want to know what it’s like to be a disabled person with certain kinds of impairments know what it’s like to fear, have fears about your own mortality in ways that a lot of other people don’t because they haven’t survived cancer among other things. So those are other ways. In which disability becomes other right? But again, you know, when you have people in leadership or teaching or students who bring these perspectives it really shifts things and that you I can’t say this enough, you just realise what it is a contribution it is to like education and discourse, because I believe that really great education is about constant debate and critique and discussion and it brings in, you know, like perspectives that are completely under underrepresented and so badly needed, right? So especially, you know, we’re entering a very interesting phase in I think, in a culture in the United States because the pandemic is very much wine, a wound down, and people have gone through an experience in which many people who’ve never thought about disability or impairment or illness had to and so the question for me is like, how does that inform the culture of this country moving forward? I’m not just talking about architectural education, I mean, in everyday lives, and so I have a lot of concern that some people just want to go back to the way things were before. I think other people realise that’s not you know, what is before like, does that even mean is that even possible? So it’s an interesting, frightening and exciting moment, I think, in this country, at least, in terms of thinking about how ideas about impairment may or may not become part of the culture, you know, that doesn’t mean just go on one second, like I’ve noticed changes in my day to day life. So for example, in the summertime, when I wear shorts, it’s very obvious that I’m an amputee. And I would walk around New York City I feel like I would often get kind of strange looks or stares from people. But since the pandemic that’s changed because again, I think people have realised that impairment is more of something that can be woven into your everyday experiences in ways that you could never have previously imagined. I don’t know if that’s created a point of contact or empathy or who knows what but, but it’s just a very subtle change that I’ve noticed in people’s attitudes that physical weakness disfigurement is something that can sort of be tolerated as an aspect of everyday life in a way that wasn’t as recently as five years ago.
Vaissnavi Shukl
I mean, it’s unfortunate, it has to be tolerated. I think it should just be normal. I mean, just like, this body is normal. There’s different forms of body that should be just normalised to the extent that you don’t make heads turn every time. You know, you see a body that looks different from yours. But my last question, it’s based on the question that I asked every time is now you have the book that’s out. What’s next? How do you take it from here? Yeah, just where do we go from here?
David Gissen
Yeah, thanks for the question. Well, first of all, I’ve been completely overwhelmed with the response to this book. It has really it has caught me a bit off guard and I’ve been very busy lecturing about it having discussions like this for the past, what has it been, seven months so I have not had a lot of time to develop a new project at the moment. However, one of the things that’s been very exciting about the response to the book, and that I’ve been, it’s been making me very happy is the number of municipal municipalities, institutions and organisations that have come to me to take some kind of role in helping them plan their futures and relative to the ideas in the book. So I’ve been having some really exciting conversations with practitioners, with museums, with municipal officials who want to better understand how the ideas in this book relate to where they want to go as an institution or as a city as planners, practitioners. So that has become a very growing part of my practice, and it’s something that I want to continue to develop, talking to institutions, talking to cities about the ways the ideas in the book can be implemented. That’s really important in terms of studies, you know, more like writing and academic things. I’m interested in spinning off some of the themes from the book and taking a closer look at things. So for example, a current obsession of mine to detail is this idea of the one story city that was advanced by many modernist architects as a kind of torch to the idea that modern urbanisation is something that required greater height and mass. And so it’s really interesting how much of that history engages with veterans. Ideas about physical weakness and physical rejuvenation, also, like ideas that are trying to figure out ways to push back against the demands of the capitalist city. So that’s something I want to take a closer look at. I don’t know where that’s gonna go. But that’s both a historical project but also a design project in terms of thinking about what that might be and what its future might be.
Vaissnavi Shukl
Awesome. Thank you so much, David, for this conversation.
David Gissen
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And I hope it was helpful.
Vaissnavi Shukl
Special thanks to Ayushi Thakur for the research and design support, and Kahaan Shah for the background score. For guests and topic suggestions, you can get in touch with us through instagram or our website through our website archoffcentre.com, both of which are ‘archoffcentre’. And thank you for listening.