In our June 2011 issue, Peter Hall writes about the fascinating relationship that the giant design consultancy, IDEO, has with a very particular type of client – governmental agencies. The firm’s trademark design thinking method is showing mammoth bureaucratic juggernauts like the Social Security Administration a deep insight into who uses their services, and how they can help streamline even the most convoluted process, allowing government officials to effectively reach out to the citizens who need them (while saving costs). In the process, IDEO also had its own significant learning curve on how to use design to fix problems in governance.

There are some interesting parts to that journey that we couldn’t share with you in the magazine, like the videos produced by the firm as part of two projects: monitoring energy use in buildings operated by the General Services Administration (GSA), and helping Clark Realty understand what kind of housing wounded veterans really need.

The GSA came to IDEO to understand how they might meet President Obama’s directive that all government buildings are to reduce energy consumption by 30% below 2003 levels by 2015. So in a sense, the client was already converted. But the administrators weren’t the only stakeholders in the project. Read more…

You may recall seeing Omhu canes on other blogs, or as a nominee for the People’s Design Award at this year’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Triennial. With their glossy, colorful painted shafts and blonde wood handles they’re a refreshing take on a product that’s seen little innovation in generations, and certainly has never been this good looking. Read more…

This summer, to mark the 20th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, four new rules were proposed by the federal government. These amendments could make the design of objects and interfaces more accessible to people of all abilities. While some designers are already addressing such issues as making websites usable by the visually impaired, there’s much more to be done. I believe an umbrella set of rules could be a great advancement in making accessibility standards universal across all websites, objects, furniture, and public places.

 As an industrial designer I am especially interested in the proposed regulation to equipment and furniture. It suggests making objects for places accessible to the public, whether these properties are owned by private or public interests, more usable than they are currently, by people of compromised abilities. This seemingly small amendment to the ADA promises to have a long-term impact on the development of a wide variety of products, from ATM machines to library furniture, from medical equipment to exercise machines. Read more…

The top picks from the “most green” and “most important” lists: William McDonough’s Adam Joseph Lewis Center (left) and Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

This week, when Lance Hosey released the G-List, his survey of the top green buildings since 1980, he was responding to Vanity Fair’s celebrity rankings of the top-rated buildings of the last 30 years, which anointed Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Bilbao as the most important building of our time. But Gehry’s name was nowhere to be found on the G-List. Why was I searching for some signs of him among the greens? Read more…

In our running series on accessibility issues in buildings and cities, we’ve looked at some ways that New York City in particular may fall short when it comes to providing easy, well-maintained design for people with limited mobility. So when our publisher noticed what appeared to be a dearth of handicap-friendly design at a well-known restaurant—one that happens to sit in a landmarked building—we took it upon ourselves to investigate.

What we found was one small-scale instance of just how complex these issues can be. In this case, the restaurant blamed the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) for rejecting its request to install an exterior-stairwell hand rail. The LPC countered that it had never received such a request, and that it would almost certainly have approved one if it had. The restaurant’s architect had only worked on the interiors, and therefore claimed ignorance of the whole situation.

It didn’t seem productive to investigate the matter beyond this impasse—but we did want to take a closer look at the larger issues at play here. What interested us most about this case was the building’s historic status. How do city government and private owners reconcile the desire to protect the character of historic buildings with the need to promote accessibility?

In theory, the solution is pretty straightforward. When asked about accessibility features in commercial spaces, a representative from the LPC said, “We’ve never turned down a request for barrier-free access. Our job is to try to figure out a way to solve a problem without detracting from the historic building or diminishing its significance.” To prove the point, LPC provided us with a list of landmarked buildings where new additions had been approved. Where accessibility features like ramps or lifts are necessary, the agency works with building owners to mitigate the visual effect of those additions, sometimes suggesting an appropriate color or material palette or camouflaging the new design with landscaping.

But exploring the bureaucratic world of design regulation made us curious to know more about which buildings fall under what regulations—and since we’d already started, we decided to follow the rabbit hole of building code just a little further. Here, for those curious about how these things work, is what we learned: Read more…

This week’s Accessibility Watch is travelling south to Rutledge, Georgia. About 50 miles outside of Atlanta, it is home to Camp Twin Lakes, where children with serious illnesses and other life challenges can still enjoy the summer-camp experience, thanks to amenities like climate-controlled cabins, fully accessible recreation facilities, and an on-site medical center. Last summer, the camp opened a monumental tree house, the kind that most children can only dream of. It has five different spaces, it’s filled with fresh air and natural light, and most importantly, it’s wheelchair accessible.

The design originated from the campers themselves. Read more…

I have never before muscled in on presentations when I’ve been asked to moderate a panel, but this time I did. It was last week at Build Boston, during a full-day symposium on socially sustainable design, when I broke my neutrality rule and showed some examples that make New York City—and other American cities too—an obstacle course for people with some disability or another. The topic of our panel, “New Models of Home for our Third Age,” made me think about how dense urban settlements, with their notoriously small living spaces, invite us to make the city itself into our living rooms (lecture halls and exhibition spaces), dining rooms (restaurants), and backyards (parks). What with the growing discussion about the advantages of urban living for aging populations—mostly because of easy access to goods and services—I wanted to call attention to the reality of our cities: how inaccessible they really are, and how much remedial work they need at every turn.

What follows are photos of three places that our publisher, Horace Havemeyer, has identified as problematic. How does a man with forearm crutches, who likes to eat in restaurants and visit cultural institutions, get past such thoughtless or piecemeal amenities? I also included one small, hopeful sign for the future. Read more…

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I use forearm crutches and I find it a bit tricky to open doors coming in from the street. Over the years, I have been gratified by the number of pedestrians who swoop in front of me and open the door; once I’m inside they scoot off on their journey, always at a very rapid pace. Who says New Yorkers are not concerned about the plight of the needy? I am always surprised and bolstered with a great sense of optimism after these encounters. There are other examples: Once a police sergeant helped me cross a two-lane street so that I could more easily get into a car. Some restaurants send their staff out to hold the outside doors.

The average citizen and even the police are attuned and helpful to the handicapped, but what about property owners, good-government groups, and the city governing agencies and legislative bodies? They are not. Maybe the difference is an issue of abstraction. The handicapped are not real to them because someone needing help is not in front of them. Read more…

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Following my recent post on the clash between historic preservation and universal design, we’ve decided to undertake a regular blog column on accessibility in buildings and cities. We hope to discuss examples from all over the world, but at first our focus will be where we are, New York City. I walk with a cane or, recently, with forearm crutches, and I find it difficult to go up or down steps or stairs. I often wonder what folks in wheelchairs do. Those of us with mobility impairments cannot easily use the subway system because there are so few elevators, and those that exist seldom are working. The bus systems are not much better, and only 239 of the city’s taxis have the necessary wheelchair lifts and ramps. (Admittedly, New York still has the largest fleet of fully-accessible taxis of any city in the nation.)

Metropolis has followed the story of handicap access since the Americans for Disability Act (ADA) was passed in 1990. Read more…

Last Saturday I attended a wedding at New York’s Players Club, which occupies a historic 19th-century mansion on Gramercy Park South, next to the National Arts Club. After getting out of the car with my forearm crutches, I navigate a brightly painted step down to the entry then push myself up four steps, where I am confronted by a curved half-flight of stairs up to the parlor floor where the event will be held. An extremely nice coat-check attendant—who seems willing to almost carry me upstairs—tells me that although the building has an elevator, it does not stop at the parlor floor. So I give one crutch to my wife, Eugenie, and slowly ascend the stairs one at a time, my left hand on the rail and my right arm in a crutch, all the while struggling against the flow of traffic heading downstairs.

Once we are on the correct level things are great and, providentially, I don’t need the bathroom two flights down. But what would I have done in a wheelchair? Read more…