Jonathan White
Our podcast is hosted on Anchor
But you can listen in most places such as: Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Radio Republic.
Jonathan is a licensed architect in the State of Ohio and has worked for the University at Buffalo’s Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access (IDEA Center) since 2007. Jonathan believes that built environment must respond to the needs of everyone, allowing all people to be independent and self-sufficient for as long as they desire. Jonathan’s experience and his (extreme) attention to detail have made him an expert in accessible and universal design. Jonathan helps create a more inclusive world by meticulously evaluating any building or design for barriers to independence, developing practical and elegant solutions, and passing along his knowledge to others through books and lectures. His current projects include the innovative solutions for Universal Design (isUD) certification program, Universal Design Education Online (UDEO), stock plans for universal design housing, as well as ongoing ADA and Fair Housing compliance audits and evaluations.
Machine Transcription provided by Happyscribe
S01E24 Jonathan White.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe
Welcome to the Enabled Disabled Podcast. I'm your host, Gustavo Serafini.
I was born with a rare physical disability called Pfft. My journey has been about self-acceptance persistence and adaptation.
On the show, we'll explore how people experience disability.
How the stories we tell ourselves can both enable and disable, how vulnerability is a foundation for strength and why people with disabilities can contribute more than we imagine.
I hope that leaders.
Companies, clinicians, families and friends will better understand our capacity to contribute to the world and help enable us to improve it.
Jonathan White is the director of design consulting at the University of Buffalo's Idea Center in the Architecture and Planning School. Jonathan is an architect and one of the country's leading experts in universal design and accessibility design. As many of you already know, universal design is a subject that is near and dear to my heart. I want every architect, designer, homeowner, and builder in the world to know about universal design and actually use it. Jonathan is a reservoir of knowledge, but he also cares deeply about the mission of spreading universal design.
As you listen to the show, ask yourself a few questions. If more professionals were aware of the benefits of universal design, why wouldn't they use it? What's the downside is cost, really the material constraint here? I encourage all of you to please share this episode with anyone you know in the construction or design industry. Help spread the word, help educate the people who are creating, designing and building the environments we live in. Let's help them better understand the responsibility they have because it goes way beyond making something look pretty.
Our built environment shape the way we live. It changes our narratives about what we think is possible, and it can help us thrive or hold us back from realizing our potential. Alright, Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us. It's a pleasure to have you.
Thanks for having me.
Absolutely. So let's get started here. You are one of the country's leading experts on universal design, and I basically I asked a very high end property manager yesterday if you knew what universal design was. And this was somebody who's been working in high end custom homes for a long time and he said, no, I don't know. I never heard of it. Most people haven't heard of it, so we are here to educate and enlighten. Please tell us what is universal Design. Can you give us a little history of how it got started?
Of what it's about?
Yeah, not a problem. Yeah, you're right. A lot of people haven't heard of it, but we're here at the Idea Center at University of Buffalo, trying to spread the word and make sure more and more people hear about it. That the concept of universal design. The term was coined back in 1985 by Ron Mace, and he had come up with a definition of that. And the basic idea is that an environment should work well for everybody without having to have some sort of adaptation or specialized design.
And that's sort of paraphrasing the early definition of it that he had come up with. And over the years, the US federal government got involved and has heard of a concept. And they started funding research into universal design and how we could, you know, improve the built environment. In 119 and 99, the University at Buffalo took over. That grant has been held by North Carolina State University for five years. And since 999, the University of Buffalo and our Idea Center here has held that grant. I think there was like a one year gap where they didn't run the grant or something.
And so we'll be basically going on 25 years when our current cycle ends in 2025, we'll be going on 25 years of holding the grant. So during that time, we've really advanced the concept of universal design quite a bit. We've improved upon a definition, trying to get more adoption. We can talk about that as we go. But the way we define universal design is that it's a process that enables and empowers a diverse population by improving human performance, health and wellness and social participation. And so the key to that.
So one thing that's unique about that definition is the idea of it being a process that universal design, or Ud, as we call it, is contextual, and it can always be improved. There's always a higher level of performance that you can try to accommodate for. And depending on what the baseline is in a certain state, country, region, or whether you're looking at residential versus commercial, there's different baselines of what's there. And so just raising the bar above those baselines, what's universal one place might not be another.
And I know that sounds kind of funny. Universal sounds like it's sort of one size fits all. But that's not what we really mean. Mean universal in the context of that, that would be everywhere and apply everything. And so at the Idea Center, we call it inclusive design. But universal design is to turn this more well known. And that's what our grant funders use. So we go with that. The next part of the definition is that it enables and empowers. So it's not just about being able to do something, but to do it well to do it comfortably the way you want to on your own terms, for a diverse population.
And so that means that one it's for everybody. We want to look at everyone who will use space and think about how it can be better for them, whether it's children, older people, people who don't speak to prevailing language in the region, anyone who's outside the average. But here's the thing. Most of us are outside the average in one way or another. If you look at any one attribute, we're all going to have something that makes us different. Maybe your average height and average weight with average abilities, but you're left handed.
And so that makes you in the minority for that one attribute. And I'm sure everyone listening can think of something that puts them at the end of the curve for something. And that's what makes us also diverse. And then the last part of the definition are those improvement areas, human performance. So we want to improve human performance, things like body fit and comfort, physical things, but also cognitive things like awareness, being aware of the environment around you or what you need to do to accomplish a task and understanding.
And then some other improvement areas are health and wellness. So staying safe, preventing disability, enabling people to be their best sales. And then the last part of social participation, which involves social integration, not like a separate wheelchair accessible entrance around the back, personalization giving people choice, the option to adapt the environment to them to some degree and cultural appropriateness and responding to context. And so we think that that definition helps solidify the concept around. What is it? What is it you who does it help? And what are we trying to achieve?
What are the outcomes we're trying to achieve?
So first question is this is applied to the built environment. It seems to me, like can be applied to other types of designs. Right. Like designing, designing. I guess a chair is part of the built environment. But like a product like we use, like a telephone or absolutely. Right.
Absolutely. Ud does go beyond buildings. We talk about it a lot of times in terms of the built environment, because were in the school of Architecture and planning. Here a UV. So that's how we came up with it. And that's how when we first started looking at the concept, that's what it was. But the term design sort of makes people think of the built environment. But a lot of things are designed. So whether that's a school curriculum or products or websites or even service delivery. And now at a technological age, we have things that are more integrated.
So you might have a building that's a part of a service that has a website and an app. Think about just an airport, for example, there's so many things going on. It's got the app to manage your flights and know where you got to go and the gates and you've got different services all happening. There food service and the travel service, obviously. So there's all these different things going on, plus the building itself. So how can those things all be integrated in a way that's helpful for everyone, but it could just be service delivery on its own.
It could just be whether it's customer service operation for an online retailer that doesn't actually have a brick and mortar location, it could just be providing that service through a website. What types of support do they have? How accessible is the website to people with different adaptive technologies on the computer. We're accessing it mobile or on a laptop first, using a phone and all those different things. So yeah, universal design is well beyond that. And we think in our new definition. I think when I talked about it, I talked about the physical environment a little bit, but the definition doesn't have that just enables and empowers a diverse population by improving human performance, health and lawless, social participation that can be in any context.
Got you that makes sense. And I think a lot of people kind of confuse universal design people who know a little bit more universal design with accessible design, right. They're not the same thing. Accessible design, at least in the United States, seems to be kind of like a more limited baseline. Right. It's a minimum standard that you have to meet in certain spaces by law. Whereas universal design says that minimum standard usually isn't even good enough. We can do so much better. And here's how we do that.
Is that correct?
Yeah. I think a lot of the reason white people conflate the two. I mean, I think it's because people who have a disability have needs that are more specific and can be defined very easily. And for somebody who doesn't have that particular disability, it requires more attention and research to be able to implement a solution that works for them because they don't have that personal experience to be able to do it. So they have to look it up or something.
Wheels.
Mobility, in particular, has the most visible impact on space requirements. So when we're trying to show visualizations or floor plans in terms of a building, we're always giving these different space requirements based on research of wheel nobility users. And so unfortunately, that sometimes makes people think, well, this is just about wheelchair users. They're just the ones who require typically more space to turn and never. And I think people with disabilities are often the part of the population who is the most disadvantaged by a typical design, and therefore they have the most again from universal design.
And so that can cause people to sort of think universal design is about people with disability. But it's really about everybody, you know, anyone who's been marginalized by typical design practice, so that could children, older people, pregnant people, very tall, very short, low vision, blind, difficulty hearing doesn't mean the language can't read cognitive disability, anxiety, PTSD, autism. And then, of course, people who use real mobility devices as well. But people carrying packages a disadvantage to people who have broken on that's temporary people who have invisible disabilities.
There's some people who just have our stand. They can't offer it y they don't look like they have a disappearing a lot of cognitive disabilities come in that way as well. So it's really for everybody and trying to improve performance for everyone.
And how much of the scientific research do you have to use when you're designing a space? Right. So for example, I think of performance. And I think of so many spaces that I've been to that are super echoy. Right? There. Restaurants, for example, just something that's picked something basic. You go to a restaurant, you can barely hear the person next to you because it's so loud and so Echo. Your brain is processing way more information. That way. It does usually create a little bit more anxiety and stress.
You don't enjoy the experience as much of being in that place. If you're in a work environment, it could be even more pronounced, right? It's lack of concentration. You're easily distracted. So I think, like the performance side of things. That's one thing that I would point to that says that's not necessarily tied to disability. But I would wager that it also helps people with cognitive impairments, people with, you know, attention deficit disorder, like autism. Right. All of those factors come in. But so it's two part question.
One is talk about, like, some concrete performance, things that you guys do. And then how much of the scientific research do you have to dive into when you're doing those designs in order to make sure you're you're doing it correctly?
So I think a lot of what we do. So we developed a tool for this because we know that design we don't usually do. The design ourselves will help designers who've been hired to do a space, and we help them make it more inclusive or universal. And so we've developed a tool called The Innovative Solutions for Universal Design at this is ud. Com. And this tool basically takes that research and boil it down into certain steps. Do this, this and this in these areas, and you get to choose how many you're going to do.
We give credits for that. And we will certify buildings that do a certain number of those solutions in each space. But we basically say here are the things that we can do that are beyond code that will make the environment better for everybody. So we've taken all of our research, and we've synthesized it down into these about 500 solutions that help make it easier for people. Now, of course, these are voluntary. Nobody has to do them. And so the the struggle is getting people to use to use these solutions where they are.
It's not too hard. We talked about acoustics in a restaurant. The reason they're not thinking about that is because they're not thinking about acoustic as no thinking about food and food service and getting food to people and thinking people enjoy their time at the restaurant. And so the acoustics in at the top of their mind. Whereas if you're designing a concert venue, the architect might hire an acoustic consultant to tell them here's the best way to make the place sound good, because that's what the space is for.
But it doesn't mean that users aren't important in a restaurant. It's not the top of people's mind. And they're not going and spending money on an acoustic consultant. They're thinking about, how does the space look? They're also usually smaller. So there's fewer people in the room to make decisions. You might just have, like an owner who's making decisions like, I like the way this looks. And I like the way that looks. And I want the ceiling man in black and whatever it is. Whereas if you're designing a concert venue, there's a lot of money involved, a lot of stakeholders at the table and saying, there's somebody there to chime in inside.
We want to have the best sounding music.
Right.
And so, yes, we should spend the money to hire the consultants. And so there's a lot of competing interests. There's a lot of different interests that people have when they have a building. And so their primary focus isn't always what other people think are important. Of course, we see that with lighting to lighting in a restaurant, a lot of people is too dark. And people start thinking about that a lot of times the restaurant that just thinking of the ambience or whatever.
But that isn't that a big lesson with universal design is that there's so much more to think about in the design process like that can seem daunting. But the benefits are also huge if you do it right.
Yeah. That is what we try to tell people that it's important to think of everything. If you want to accommodate everybody, accommodate as many people as possible, give people the most enjoyable experience. You can think about everything. Restaurants is talk a lot at they're small, independent, independent. When you can start looking at bigger companies and bigger places, they've got whole teams of people who are looking at marketing and imaging and how we look and all of that. And even then, they can sometimes get it wrong because they want a cool aesthetic and have it all dark and they want a young hip audience.
Right.
So they don't care about this other crowd sometimes. So it can be a double in short, larger it all depends on what their objectives are. It's really all about priority and value. What do you value as a company or as a person to do the value inclusion enough to make sure that we're doing everything we can compare to all the other things that we value, like having a good ambiance and having a young hip crowd or whatever it is that you're trying to get to your establishment.
That makes sense. So the thing is.
When it comes to architecture, the whole job of an architect is to manage competing things. They have all these different consultants and we've got heating Ducks and we've got the structure and we've got the lighting and we got all these other code requirements and zoning setbacks. And every job of the archive is to manage all these constraints and figure out how to work them together. And so you don't have to choose between having a young hip crowd and having good lighting in a restaurant. You don't have to choose between.
You can find creative ways of making sure that everybody is accommodated and still have the ambience you want. It doesn't have to be a choice, right?
It's a lack of awareness and a lack of information. Really? Right at the end of the day, because if you're doing it from the beginning, do you have a general idea of what the additional cost like an additional cost would be to make the space more inclusive? Let's say or take something simpler. Wheelchair users.
Yeah. I mean, we found that sometimes. Well, first of all, in public space for wheelchair users, it's really no extra cost because the law mandates who wheelchair accessibility from the start. Now to provide a little bit extra room in certain areas beyond the minimums. Some people just try to look at this number and say, Well, it's this many extra square feet to do an extra seven inches here. And therefore that increases the cost. Pay this much. But that's not really the case. You can plan a building so that that space doesn't come from areas where you need it, where you need it someplace else.
And so if you have a smart and efficient circulation plan, for example, that doesn't have wasted space, you can do that. I can't tell you the number of floor plans I've looked at. I've got so many dead end sort of wasted spaces in a building. And then they say, oh, well, we can't fit this in the bathroom here. Well, if the circulation plan had been more efficient from the strike, you could have. So you really have to think about it from the beginning. You know, I don't know, there's a lot of shit challenges and barriers.
And overcoming the cost misconception is definitely one of them certain things. And because it's a process, there's always something better and more expensive. But that's really true of anything, right? You can always have a nicer toilet, right. That has more features on you can always have nicer lighting and different better paint fixtures, nicer quality features, a nicer looking bar. You can always upgrade the materials. There's always something nicer out there. Right. So yeah. Can universal design costs more? Sure. It becomes a problem a lot of times, I think in residential areas, when you're looking at an individual homeowner trying to buy something.
Well, yeah. Kitchen with pull out drawers and shelves is great. But guess what? Every pullout drawer costs more money. So you can get the base cabinets that don't cost that or kitchens are expensive to begin with. Right. So they'll say, Well, this is going to cost more. So in some cases, especially in residential warehouses are always built up off the ground. Sometimes it does cost more because you got to dig down deeper to get a full basement. If you lower the house by a foot. Well, that's an extra foot.
You might have to die if you want a full basement. Okay. That's why we sort of encourage at the development level at the neighborhood level. If you're looking at a large area of land, what can we do across the whole area that provides easy access to the way the whole site has been graded. So if you're doing 50 houses, how can we grade the whole site so that it's not at that individual level. But I can talk all day about a lot of the challenges to implementing universal design.
But again, the overall theme seems to be the earlier you plan and think about it, the better off you're going to be and the better the long term solutions are going to be right. Because most of this, I mean, I see this with my business all the time is we get brought in late to the party and then, of course, making the changes that the client may or may not want. Then it costs time and money. But if it had been done in the beginning, it would have been ten times easier.
Right. And the cost the cost would have been whatever the client is willing to spend would have been more aligned with what they actually want.
Yes, absolutely. I mean, one great example of this is a wider doors. You could have a house, and it's got 30 or 32 inch doors to go and wide in all those doors of 36 is a big expense once the house is built, but to do it beforehand, $100 for the whole house, right. It's really not a lot of money in the graph scene of things, and it makes it easier to move furniture and out of rooms without tending their walls. So why shouldn't people just do that?
Okay.
Maybe they don't use a wheelchair, but they do probably have a dresser or a bet. They need to Terry into that bedroom at some point moving in and out and don't want to get their new walls. Now, that extra $100. When you're spending that much on the house, there's easy ways where you can get the $100 back out of the house for something else that makes it worth it. And it's especially difficult. Widening doors once the house is built is always going to be more expensive because your ten part of wall.
But what if the walls have been placed that you can't even do that because there's another intersecting wall so you can't even wide indoor if you want to, because the house has been laid out. So it really just create a problem down the line. We like to compare to sustainability, sustainability. It costs more to have more, you know, green building up front solar panels or whatever it is you're doing to that building can cost more upfront. But over a period of time, it saves money. So an Led light bulb.
Yeah. That cost more than in investing upfront. But if it lasts ten times longer and it doesn't cost ten times as much, it only cost. I don't want to give a number here because of the prices with that. Well, but let's say hypothetically cost three times as much, but to save you ten times. Well, that's great. The problem with your universal design, it's not as easy to quantify that because you don't have that much energy. You don't have that energy bill to hold on to. We're talking about employee productivity, which is always very subjective.
How do you measure that? One of the ways that we think we can improve adoption of universal design is by doing more research to help prove the long term value of it. And we've started doing that with our ISD solutions, comparing buildings that have used it versus ones that have it in the same buildings are the same people who move from the non universally designed to universal design building, seeing, doing surveys on that. But it is very difficult to quantify and getting more research to prove the value for everyone that helps everybody.
And so that's what we're trying to do with our research is try to get that evidence to show, you know, hey, we might not be able to show exact dollars and cents this light bulb versus that one, but to show that it can improve productivity satisfaction with the space.
Whatever it is or just if it's commercial building, right. That if it's more inclusive, then you can easily measure once people know, right. You can easily measure how many more wheelchair users have come here, how many more low vision people have come to the space and have shop there and have spent time there like you can. There are things that we can measure to say. Look, there are real economic incentives for doing this. We just need to get over that mental block that it's not worth it or that the tried and true.
Whatever that is is good enough, right? These mental blocks that we need to kind of break down with people.
Yeah, it's getting past the misconception of cost. But, I mean, first you have to get over there's the lack of knowledge, awareness to begin with, so that's the first one a lot of people will say, Well, there's no demand for it. That's why they don't do it. There's no demand. But and some people don't know what they want. Yet demand can be created, you know, look at the iphone as an example, right? I don't know. 2025 years ago was cell phones were just not everybody had a cellphone, a couple of people had them for work or whatever.
If you told them, hey, how about we put a whole computer in your pocket, then you like that's crazy. Why do I need that?
Why do I do the wheel? Why do I have a computer in my pocket? Yeah. Yeah. Facebook. All the great companies create their own demand.
Yeah. Facebook is another great example. Who would have thought that that would be as big as it is today. And so if people aren't asking for some this maybe because they don't know that they would want it. And especially in housing, where how people have grown up with housing that's in sort of the same for 100 years, they might not know that. Hey, that's something they want. You don't know. You want the pullout drawer until you've had a house that had to pull out drawer and realize how much easier it is in the kitchen.
And nicer it is, you know, it's sort of like, well, a lot of people talk about just a slow creep. Like, if you're something you have to watch out for, the older you get, maybe the more money you make in your career. Right. So the more things you start to buy. Right. And so once you buy a new car, you kind of always want a new car you don't want to go back and use. Or once you hire somebody to mow your lawn for you. Now that's an expense that you pay or shovel your driveway or whatever it is haven't made.
Have somebody clean your house for you. Once you experience that, it's tough to go back. Right. But I'm sure if you ask a lot of people, hey, would you like to have somebody clean your house for you? They'd be like, yeah, yeah. I love that. I don't want to pay for it. But yeah, I love them. So there's a way that it can be done in a way that the cost isn't that much greater thinking early in planning ahead, that would be great. And people sort of realize that.
Right. People put vinyl siding on their house. Not that I love vinyl siding, but it's easy to maintain. So why are people doing it? Because they don't want to have to clean and repaint and do all the stuff. I realize it's easier. Sure, they'll spend the money to put that on instead of repointing the break or just slaps and vinyl over it.
Right.
Very good looking. But they've realized that there's some value there that to them, and it doesn't cost a lot. Right. Not a great example, because the vinyl is not exactly nice material, but it's something that people will go for.
It proves the point. Do you see any trends in building or just in general? Like, I'm thinking of aging in place where, you know, kind of we can piggy back off of the momentum that's being built there and make universal universal design to break that awareness barrier. Right. So there's more people who are now. We have an aging population in the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia. People want to live in their home longer, as opposed to going to assisted living facilities or nursing homes. Right. There's going to be more and more momentum with that in more and more demand for we talked about that a lot.
Yeah. As a reason that people should do it. The problem that we have that they have as well is that a lot of people until they get to that age, they have what we call Peter Pan syndrome. They don't think we'll ever grow. Well, that won't be me. Or by the time they do realize it, it's already. Well, they already have their house. The house is built. It's like 32 ages. When they're first buying their house, they're not thinking of it. And it's not until they see what's happening to their parents or something.
And then they're going, oh, that's going to happen at us. Well, our houses are built and our kids, they already have a house, too. So it can be a bit late and people tend to adapt to their surroundings. They don't like a lot of people don't like change. And so that can be an issue as well.
So where do you see a solution for that?
Well, I think it's better education, better communication of the concept. That's why we size that definition was improved, the improvement areas and clear outcomes. I also think education and design schools. I think a lot of design skills too often focus on visual forms of meeting, some sort of perhaps or meeting. And I can performance metric rather than functioning usability. And so I think if we did that people would be more perceptive to it. And we can use these arguments as reasons why these should go into schools.
Right.
Well, we need to start teaching kids who are going to be designers now because look at the demographics and in an educational setting, people will buy that. And they'll say they'll say, okay, yes. We look at the statistics and we realize this and we should adjust our curriculum.
Right.
But to get to each individual buyer at that level becomes an issue. I think that's really that the key is better education and communication of the concept. And I think sort of seeing it, too. I mean, seeing it around, you know, company having greater adoption. Like I said, once you see it and you like it, then you're more likely to demand it. Why don't I have that in my house? You see that all the time in housing, right? I don't know what was a good example in housing closet space.
Closet space has gone up drastically in years. Right. Once people have those big closets, they love their big closets. And now they demand it. And now they build new houses. Big closets. Right. Whereas back in the 30s, they said, no, I don't need that much stuff. So I've got a basement so hopeful once you have it, you want it, implement it. We see other people having it. Same thing with the iphone, right. I don't need a computer in my pocket. So you saw everybody else using one.
This is actually pretty good. It's kind of nice to have absolutely.
And to build off your point earlier. Right. Where we should the educational component says the AIA. The ASID it always fascinates me that there's such a blind spot there, because if you look at let's say you look at a car. A car is engineered first and foremost, to be able to function right to function reliably within those parameters or to meet some kind of performance spec within that basic function first. Right. Form follows function.
Right.
Look at how many, amazingly good looking, beautiful cars there are in the world. But we don't look at home design in the same way. It's aesthetics first, which makes it makes no sense to me like it's just where did this blind spot come from when we don't do that with so many of the other products and things that we use on a day to day basis?
Well, you know, I think what happened a lot of universal design, I think we can trace back to the start of modernism. There was the idea of form follows function. And I talk to you a little bit about how a lot of design schools would focus on aesthetics, but also on these performance metrics. So we sort of do that with homes a little bit. Right. We talk about the installation value in our values to save on the heating costs. And that's talking about the performance of the home and high efficiency furnace is good performance and good energy performance windows.
So we do talk about performance a similar way to cars. We talk about all how zero to 60 or whatever miles per gallon, whatever performance metrics you want to do. But then I could also argue that cars, you know, how designed are they to be comfortable for the user? How many women can't put their purse anywhere in the car? Right. Because nobody thought I thought about that. And so every time I drive my car, if my wife is in a bastard sheet, she said, a purse, like under her feet.
Right. So there are things that are considered but the automotive industry and the reason why adjustable seat came about was because of the automotive industry. When it was basically trucks, truck drivers. A lot of them went off to war and women would start taking jobs as truck drivers, and they couldn't reach the pedals or whatever it was steering wheel. And so they said, Well, we need to have adjustable States. And then they started putting them in all the cars. The adjustable seats were a great idea.
You can learn when you have different people. When you have diversity, you can learn from that diversity. Now, you wouldn't think of making a car without adjustable seats. Right. So you can do the same thing in housing. But it takes a while, too. Like I said, people don't might change, especially in construction, unlike the automotive industry, where, well, first of all, all the engineers die in the car, went to school for that right. And then there's always some new technology, right. So really say, to stay up on it.
But in construction, a lot of those trade skills are passed down generation and generation. But the thing is, architecture go to school. Right. So if that education works its way into architecture school, just like new vehicle technology makes its way into automotive engineers schools, then that can help get it out. There more.
Yes. Those are good points. Those are good points. Do you have any good examples of livable spaces that you guys have helped design that you feel are, like, really positive, really positive success story that you can. You can highlight. Maybe we can the audience and go and visit the website, see photos. Explore that.
Yeah. So on our website, our ISD website, this is ud. Com. There's some features I forget exactly where you click on at the top menu. There's something there either press room or featured items that you can go to and see some of the buildings that have used it. Proctor and Gamble, for instance, used on one of their new facilities. And that's one of the ones we've partnered with to do research as people move from the old facility to the new space that was. In addition, the Children's Museum in Pittsburgh built what they're calling the Museum lab, an extension in the Museum.
They believe we're calling them the first. The first is certified building. Uni Land Development company did a Hampton by Hilton branded hotel right here in Amherst, which is a suburb of Buffalo where we're from. So they use the ISD, and then I like it so much. They went and used it again. And so I believe for each of those three, there's a little feature on the website that talks about them. What's the University design? There's a few pictures up there as well, and we've got some other big ones in the pipeline.
I can't name just confidential. I haven't started that sort of thing. So we've got a pretty big partner that we're working in the next couple of months, we're going to go out of survey some existing sites around the country and offer suggestions we've presented for them before. So we have things in the pipeline as well. And then in terms of housing, you know, I co authored a book called Inclusive Housing, a pattern book. It's about ten years old. Now there's links to buy that. We also have a website called Ud Education dot.
Org, where people can go. And we have all sorts of online continuing education classes where people can learn about it. We offer continuing education credit for architects in the US for taking these courses, but anybody can take them the design for anybody to be able to take a lot of them. But that website, also, in addition to the online courses, has links to purchase all these publications and has a whole list of recommended publications. There's a resources menu item where they've got that there are some free resources there that some older stuff of ours that we had done as well as some multi publications.
There are some tree Dolos Universal Design, New York to be commissioned by New York City Design, a guidebook on Universal Design for them. That's up there for free. So there's that and there's links set to others for recommended publications as well. So those would all be great places to go to get more information on Universal Design, but also the ISD website to see examples of this in practice as well.
I've signed up for a course and I look forward to taking several more.
I think you're in it now. Yeah.
Correct. It's awesome. I think the the interesting thing there, right, is why do you think Besides money? Because money is always a factor in in our lives. But Besides money, do you think there's a reason, a deeper reason or additional reasons why companies seem to be leading the way in this? Yeah.
I think. I think the reason for that is we're seeing a lot of this in, like disability and inclusion wings of a company, that Department or whatever. I think a lot of companies, they see value in being seen as socially responsible and in some ways, a company. They always want to try to look good, whatever it is they do, whether you're a Petroleum company or whatever it is you're doing. They always want to try to look good to the public, to have a positive perception. And so any big company wants to do.
They want to be seen as being right by the employees and so on and so forth. They hate and even negative media attention that might come if they're is like this or that right. And so I think we start to see that from a disability from a diversity and inclusion perspective. Especially the times are in making sure that the companies is treating women minorities equally as everyone else. And so disability usually falls under that umbrella. Are we making sure disability is taking care of as well?
And so they want to be seen as socially responsible, whereas every single Joe Schmo Well, I see lots of people post stupid stuff on the Internet. They not necessarily care too much about. Not everybody cares about their image as well as a giant company is because it doesn't mean millions or billions of dollars today. Right. You know? Well, you shouldn't use me as an example, but just any person walking down the street were to say the wrong thing or do something silly or say something that was bad about a person with disability.
It wouldn't really affect them financially. Might for me if I were on video saying something bad. Okay. Well, I work in the field. I guess that would affect me, but just anybody else of your construction working. You're caught on tape saying someting like that. It might not really affect you. But if a company is thought of in the media as not being friendly to a certain group of people. I can blow up on Twitter and sync their stock and cost millions or billions of dollars. So they see a value there that not everybody else necessarily has to see.
So.
It'S tough to bring it back to dollars and cents like that. But I think that's why you're seeing it. Companies. There is a value there. And I'm not saying that's the only reason why it's not always just about money. Of course, people want to always have everybody think the best of them. But that can be a good impetus to make sure you act on it and make sure you drive at home.
No, we just need to keep creating more incentives. Right. And hopefully as more of these buildings get built and people are happier in them, it's just going to give people more reason to, of course, why wouldn't we want to do this for homes? It's a little trickier, but there's always the possibility that a celebrity embraces it right in an influencer embraces. It makes it the thing to do for a lot of people. But sure, on the podcast this week, it was interesting. Like I spoke with Julie Sawchuck, and she's helping accessible design in Canada.
So when she was in her, I think when she was 40, she had a spinal cord injury. She was hit by a car. And when she came back from the hospital, what she said in the podcast is like, I think three of her best friends before she even got back from the hospital, had already modified their homes to make it accessible so that she could visit, feel comfortable, hang out, right. That's a really good story. But it's also important in it. It just points back to that.
Hey, we never know what's going to happen to us. But be what if we have a friend who has a disability, whatever or multiple friends or we just want to have that idea of I want my home to be inclusive. I don't want to I don't want to not let people into my home because I didn't think of something very basic in the design process that I could have thought of.
Yeah, absolutely. The statistics on it. And again, it's really just getting people to know this stuff. But now most people, they move homes every eight to ten years or so. We basically find any place. And every eight to ten years, on average, at least in the US, that's gone up a little bit in recent years. But, you know, when you look at the longevity of the house, the house itself lasts 7500 years or more, many cases. And so the odds of somebody with mobility limiting disability living in that house at any given point in time, it's over the life of the house.
At some point, somebody's going to be living at it's kind of disability. If you include friends or visitors or disability. They computed that to be like a possibility that every single given house built have a visitor with a disability. You know, I don't know. I guess at least once in the house, you know. And so, hey, if you're willing to do it for your friends, you know, you have a friend. Okay. Great. But let's say you're in charge of building 50 houses or why not make them all so that somebody who can visit any of them.
And we've got options, too. Another thing we're working at at the Idea Center is this stock plans for housing. We've got affordable versions as well that we're working on. They're basically done. And it's on our website, Idea at Buffalo. Edu. There's the link to the stock, the stock houses. Not all the plans are up there yet, but the project page is up, and we're hoping to get all the plans up there soon. There's just some checking and stuff we're doing on them. But, you know, it can be affordable, and it really depends, too.
You know, a lot of it is just making it so that you can install these features later. Like I said, to widen indoor afterwards is difficult. So you just do it from up front. That might be $100. Right.
Okay.
All the fancy stuff in the kitchen, it might cost a little more. But guess what? Appliances come and go over time. You can always swap out appliances. You can always we add a drawer to the base content later if you want, if you need it. Right. But it's a kitchen designed to allow it, right? Yeah. So it doesn't have to be expensive when we got options out there as well. In that book I talked about inclusive housing at Pattern Books. Got some options for housing in there as well.
It's got some four plans laid out, but a lot of it is the writing. Well, I don't know who puts the first light bulbs in the house. I guess the contractor does. Right. But next time we go to put light bulbs, and that's usually the homeowner who's going on replacing light bulbs. Right. So could you have good lighting? Could the house be wired to have lighting in the right way? A light switch near the bad, right? Or whatever it is. There's a lot of houses that used to be built.
They don't have any light switches. It was just yet Plymouth Formants. So there's lots of things that we can think about when designing a house. I don't really necessarily cost a lot of extra money. That wouldn't be thought of as extravagant. Like having light in a room.
Can you take that? I'm imagining you can take that same principle with bathrooms. Right. So you can do you don't have to do the whole make it super in the private home, then grab bar that's forever. Yeah, but you can have the plywood backing so that it's easy to put in grab bars later. You can have it in the shower all around the shower.
I would say put a zero step shower. And I think it's a little tricky when there's on bathroom because lot of people lie to let their kids not in a tub. Some people like to show that's tough when there's only one bathroom that really comes down to preference. I think the trend is turning more towards showers now, but I think it's an age thing to younger people want showers and people who have kids or older people want be able to. So they have to quote me on that.
I know this is going online. I don't know. I have statistics to back me up on that one, but that's just what I've heard.
They have the walk in tubs now, too, though, right? That also make it easier to get in and out of the they do.
Most people aren't going to install those right away, but a lot of them can be installed in the same place. Right. So you could have the floor design that strong as to hold no more water or has the floor strong enough to hold if they have to cut out, match the memes to put in a roll and show in the future, you can do that.
So.
These things can be done. So it's not too big of an issue. They do make bathrooms that have adjustable base cabinets that can come out. So you hang the sink on the wall and the base it can be removed later. Or make sure that when you're designing the bathroom, you have enough storage someplace else. So if you do lose that storage under the sink later, you've got it someplace in the bathroom, you got it nearby. So there's a lot of strategies that you can use. But again, that becomes difficult in a retrofit, right.
You've done a lot of bathroom retrofits for people where we have to take out their sand like that's our only storage. You know, we don't really have any other option because we can't just blow out all the walls and move the chimney to give you more storage, you know very easily on. But when you think about how to start all that stuff, less problems go away.
So.
There are some other places where universal design being successfully applied as well. It's not just the built environment. Like we said, universal design for learning is a big concept for educators. Think educators. They realize that all children learn differently. They see every day in the classroom in different grades to behave differently, and they've realized it's not just about well, the average kid versus children or special needs. How sort of used to be okay. These kids ran that classroom. I mean, that can be necessary. Still, it's depending on how different themes are.
But then they also have testing, right. So they're these kids are taking tests that we can see the grades you can see the improvements or you can see what's working, what's not working. And so we've got these query to find outcomes.
So.
That'S all part of ID for line. It's really what we're trying to emphasize with the built environment as well. Half clear outcomes. We need to have research that shows that it works, that these outcomes are being achieved to help in those people. That is necessary.
I.
Think beauty for learning. Hey, parents are all for making sure that their kids have the education that they need. Right? There's no disincentive there. There's no competing competing thing there. But I'm sure if they said, okay, well, this is going to cost you an extra whatever per year, and we're going to double your school taxes to do this. People wait, how much better is this? Technically. So that's the thing dispelling some of these misconceptions about costs and and making sure that they understand the value that they are receiving.
So if there is a cost increase that they're seeing the value directly.
I mean, I hope the educational metrics, you know, bear some really positive results because education has been so standardized. I went when I was in high school in the early 1990s, and that was a much different experience than it is today. Same thing with College. But how many kids every year fall through the cracks because the teaching methods are too rigid, because the standard standardized tests are too limited or because we don't account for different ways people learn. I mean, the cost on society over a lifetime is enormous, right?
I mean, we have the debate here in the US about about Common Core, right? The whole idea behind Common Core is that here's a bunch of outcomes that they should achieve. And then what happens is you get textbook manufacturers who are designing criteria to attest, and then the teachers don't like teaching to a test or teaching based on kids needs. And so you have to be careful that you're not being too prescriptive like our ISD, for example. That's why we've got these voluntary solutions. There is there is no one magic solution to making sure that this building is accessible or is universally designed.
You've got a lot of different things you could do, and some things will work better than others for different groups. Some things will work better or this group something will work better in that group. And so it's picking being smart about it being delivered about it. Thinking about what do I want to achieve with this project? And that's really true of any design project, though. Do I want to have good sound in here a lot of these things with universal designing. If you ask somebody, do you want a building that does better in this way or that way they say yes.
And so the question is always, well, how can we just do that and not increase the cost? So that's important. And that's sort of why we have universal design. In addition to these accessibility standards, the law requires this minimum accessibility. You can design some pretty awful buildings if you just follow the accessibility legislation, right? I could probably design a building that is not very good for wheelchair users. I completely complies with the standard. It would be an interesting challenge for one day to design the worst possible Ada compliant building, but I'm sure it can be done.
And it's the same thing with teaching, right? I mean, you can have standards for teaching, but then you have a test. And if you've got a teacher that just teaching to the test, well, are you really measuring the outcomes? Are the goals being achieved? That's the mission to achieve the goals are they learning certain concepts that they're supposed to be learning? And so we have something that's too prescriptive as well. And so we try to avoid that with universal design to be too prescriptive. Here's the research.
Here's some ideas. Here's some solutions. We call them solutions that you can use to to help improve the design.
That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Is there anything that I missed that you feel is important to talk about?
Well, I think no, I think we kind of hit everything here. I'm looking at some of my notes here, and I think it just about everything that I wanted to talk about when it comes to universal design.
I.
Think just the education and that research component. I can't handle that whole enough to have that research that demonstrates the value to people having performance based outcomes that we can measure to help prove the value and having the education in the right place from the right people know about the concept and know what it is so that they can advocate for it. And one of the things we want to do at the Idea Center is to expand and increase the adoption of ISD and have Is credit professionals build a network so that it really gets out there similar to what sustainability is able to achieve.
I think if we can follow that model, that's a fairly successful model. So we've had some early successes with some of these buildings. But if we can, we can follow that model. We can really take it to another level.
And maybe it's just the thought that just track me right now is the more we can impress upon architects, especially, right, the amount of responsibility that they have in their hands. They are shaping the way we live in our world and our built environment in our cities and our homes pretty much travel everywhere. The more they get a sense of what that actually means and who they're actually excluding or limiting or making things more difficult for if that starts to enter their brain, then they can start to rethink the way they design.
Right. And what the outcomes are that they should be looking for?
Yeah. I mean, you're not designing a building. You're designing a place for people. And I think it goes back again to Bud for learning again, that teachers have always sort of understood that they're shaping young minds, right? That it's about the person, right? Is architects understand that this building is for people and people should be comfortable in the building to the maximum extent feasible? That's it. I think sometimes they get out of school and you get into practice and you start to think, well, you've got all these other demands and client wants this and the client wants to and the client wants this under time crunch and all these other real world sort of issues kind of come in.
You can help you lose your focus on that. Well, I'm just doing what the client wants me to. The client wants this. That's what I built. And so you have a responsibility there, too. And it's good to remember that.
So I know you've mentioned it a few times on the podcast already, but one more time, how can people find you? Where do they go? Where can they connect?
So we're University at Buffalo School of Art in Planning. We're one of the only I think we are the only school in the country that has a concentration in inclusive design. So if you're an architect looking to if you're looking into going into architecture or becoming an architect or going to getting a master's degree in architecture, our Masters program here is the only one with the concentration and inclusive design. And even if you didn't come from a four year architecture program, you get your pastor science something else.
So we have a Fre and a half year Masters program where the latter half of that is you can choose to concentrate an inclusive design, but also for architects, we have deduction. Org where we have continuing education courses on this and a whole bunch of other resources. Even if you're not an architect, you want to know about universal design, you can take these courses or go and look up all the books on that website, and you can learn more if you want to learn more about the idea center and what we do in the whole ton of projects that we do.
That's an idea that a Buffalo Edu APIs easy direct because it's architecture plants what that stands for. And then lastly, if you're looking at designing a building and you want it to make it universal design, you want to even get certified universally designed. This is U dot com, has that program on their region. Learn all about that. And there's like a free trial where you can see all the solutions and see what's there what we recommend do for your building.
Fantastic. I really appreciate the time, the knowledge. I'm really happy we connected. And thank you so much for being here.
Thanks a lot for having me.
Absolutely. Have a good one.
Connect with Jonathan White on Social Media:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ideacenterUB
Instagram: www.instagram.com/idea_center_buffalo/
Twitter: www.twitter.com/IDeA_Center
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/idea-center-university-at-buffalo/