Hephaistos: A Phenomenological Approach to Inclusive Design

The paper; ‘Hephaistos: A Phenomenological Approach to Inclusive Design’ is a critical reflection on collaborative working methods in architectural education. It can be seen as an incisive contribution to inclusionary design and its interface with 1:1 architectural projects within an academic context. With the objective ‘to leave no one behind’, a fundamental of inclusionary thinking, we designed and built four ‘haptic’ pavilions for the H22 City Expo, a design showcase for sustainable thinking and urbanism. Insight and focus were provided by our collaborators; four young people from The Danish Association of Youth with Disabilities (SUHM). The project was conducted in collaboration with first-year Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape students at the Royal Danish Academy School of Architecture and was allowed by and benefited with input from a number of collaborators, including Bevica Fonden, IKEA, Spacon and X, Dinesen and SUHM. The intention was to stimulate discourse relating to architecture’s experiential potential, respective of diverse physical and mental abilities. Our objectives were achieved by engaging the phenomenological capacity of architecture, creating pavilions focussing on a broad spectrum of sensory experience; sound, sight, smell and touch. The intention was to challenge both the ocular-centric approach typical of abstract architectural thinking and primarily the standardised metric-based approach utilised in modern building regulation standards. Our intention was to reappraise their limitation instead, shifting focus to a more diverse body type and ability model. The paper illustrates how a collaborative working method with the inclusion of key insights from collaborators at critical design stages can reveal new, non-ocular, experiential potential, inclusive of a broader, more diverse user group. Both the built work and our subsequent critical reflection point towards the potential for greater design sensitivity through a heightened awareness of differing ability models.