Adaptive Design in NYC
by Justine Bochenek, Research Coordinator | Accessibility, Travel, Adaptive Design
“So it’s all cardboard?”
Sam and I could hardly believe it when we arrived at the Adaptive Design Association, Inc. (Adaptive Design) in New York City–a non-profit organization that develops low-cost adaptive design solutions using cardboard!
Tri-Wall Cardbord can withstand weights between 120-300 lbs!
“Cardboard is understood as a discardable material,” Tamara told us, explaining how this felt like an apt metaphor for disability. Disabled people are made to feel discardable everyday–that because their bodies don’t fit into a world designed for a certain body type, their bodies are allowed to be excluded. Reclaiming cardboard as instead an essential material, the foundation of pretty much all the fabrications made at the Adaptive Design, represents the important narrative shifting work this organization is doing on top of changing individual lives. From chairs, to cubbies, play-stations, the fabrications are all custom-made to fit the individual body of a client–available for free for families.
The Adaptive Design office is high ceilinged, open concept and full of life. We were greeted by Eric, one of the designers and fabricators who showed us around. We met Antoinette and her dog, who shared the work she does making 3-D tactile communication cards. The cards are communication and engagement tools for children who do not have formal means of expression and benefit from tactile experiences, including but not limited to those with visual disability. The Adaptive Design produces these cards en masse for the American Printing House for the Blind (APH), as well as custom-made cards. The cardboard cards are attached to tactile objects that represent a word, thought or concept. Each card is handmade by the fabricators at Adaptive Design, but their output is staggering! Below the stairs of the office were stacks and stacks of huge clear tupperware containers, each containing hundreds of cards to be sent to the APH, who distributes the standardized set (STACS) through a federal reimbursement process.
We then moved upstairs to see the workshop. Outside the workshop are a row of 3D printers and sewing machines, which are used to add extra utilities to the creations. Eric shows us a 3D printed object that allows a client of theirs who wanted to learn to play trumpet without the use of two arms. The sewing machines allow for the final touches of comfort, adding yoga mat material to seats, chair backs and more.
In the workshop, all machines, tables and huge piles of (you guessed it) cardboard, are organized so that someone in a wheelchair could maneuver easily around the space. Our primary contact, Tamara, uses a power wheelchair and meets us in the workshop. She tells us her story of first coming to New York as a student, and feeling very uncomfortable traveling alone as she felt unseen. Her power wheelchair, she says, gets her 90% of the way to access the city, however, that last 10% –visibility–is still enough to stop her from feeling included and safe. Her first adaptation therefore, was a tall light pole attached to the back of her powerchair. She now feels safer rolling through the city at her leisure, knowing that she is actually going to be seen. Durable Medical Equipment (DMEs) like power wheelchairs are not only expensive to buy and repair, but the process is arduous and time consuming. The low-cost adaptations made by the Adaptive Design can be client ready within 3-4 weeks, while DME purchases or repairs can take well over a year. Most of the Adaptive Design’s clients are children, and long wait times means that the kids may grow out of the devices while waiting for them.
Our visit to the Adaptive Design was a highlight of the trip to NYC for Sam and myself, not only to see the space in person (we had originally heard of the Adaptive Design from Sara Hendren’s book, What Can A Body Do? How We Meet the Built World, which if you haven’t read, I HIGHLY recommend it) but to have important conversations about accessibility, disability and human value in space. Eric told us that his ideas around accessibility started changing after hearing a lecture on the “acceptable range of variation in bodies” in public life, meaning that every body is different, however, the way the world is designed only allows for a minimal amount of variation, and anything outside of that variation is deemed unacceptable. Planners, architects and designers could all learn to think more deeply about ways in which that range of acceptability can be expanded, or better yet, exploded!
Ross, Buliung, Titchkosky, and Hess write in their 2023 paper, “Engaging Disability Theory in Planning Practice”,
Being familiar with disability perspectives can aid such actions by helping planners to unbind themselves from reductionist, binary approaches to disability which, for expediency purposes, may gloss over questions about disability as an identity, embodied experiences of disability, and excluded viewpoints. Planners might employ a ‘radical openness’ (Soja, 1996) to disability perspectives when considering local planning conditions and how they are experienced (2023, p. 4).
Employing a perspective of radical openness to adaptation, flexibility and low-cost solutions, I think, must become an essential practice for planners if we want to make real change in accessibility and inclusion for people with disabilities. Taking the Adaptive Design as a key leader in this movement, our lab will continue to learn more about the ways in which space can allow for adaptation, and leadership from disabled people in how the world can be remade to have them fit.
Thank you to Eric, Alyssa, Tamara, Antoinette and the other staff and volunteers at Adaptive Design for making our visit to special!
