Scaffolding
Sometimes you just need a good poem. Even in a Building Blog. Masons, when they start upon a building, Are careful to test out the scaffolding; Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points, Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints. And yet all this comes down when the job’s done Showing off walls […]
Visitability
Visitability! What a lovely concept, and what a goal to strive for. I first heard the word from Subhash Vashishth at the Indian Building Code seminar but it’s been around since the 1980s and in common use among architects, designers and the disabled community in the UK and the US. The idea is that it […]
Sometimes A Great Notion | The Curb Cut Effect
Some of the participants at the Indian Building Code seminar were pretty angry. Many use wheelchairs to get around, one is blind and one was there inspired by his wife who is completely paralyzed (he also has hearing issues). Yet the seminar was held in a training centre built by the Bureau of Indian Standards […]
Getting to Know the Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex
What does the brain have to do with our building project? Consider this a short introduction to tenacity, a quality anyone building a world-class campus showcasing universal design needs a LOT of. New research suggests that “the anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC) is an important network hub in the brain that performs the cost/benefit computations necessary […]
The Joy of Design
I visited the site a few days ago and for the first time it really struck me: This is BIG. And we are very small. Because given all the dreams we have for this place, and how little experience we have with building anything, let alone a 50,000-square-foot centre of excellence, it’s daunting. That’s where […]
Accessible Bathrooms: More Complicated Than You Think
We’ve begun planning the bathrooms. It’s complex! Just a few of the questions we need to answer: Separate options for men and women or unisex? How many fully accessible toilets on each floor, bearing in mind they are much larger than normal loos? How many changing places do we need and where should they be […]
Building Code Fundas: It’s All In The Detail
I have this weird power to see, even without measuring, when things are not absolutely straight or perfectly symmetrical. A crooked picture on a wall leaps out at me, as if crying for help and I feel compelled to respond, to straighten pictures in other people’s homes, and in banks, hotels and doctors’ offices too. […]
It’s Not All Bricks and Mortar
While the continued activity at our building site is the exciting part that everyone is eager to see (we can hardly keep ourselves away – it’s so tempting to keep running down there to check on the progress), there’s an awful lot more to creating a building than rigging girders and constructing walls. Back at […]
The Building Takes Shape
A bunch of us celebrated World Disability Day this year by visiting our construction site. We didn’t exactly get our hands dirty, but standing there on a piece of land that seemed to stretch for acres, with a view of the Himalayas in the distance, walls going up before our eyes and decisions being […]
Born on a Mountainside. Building a Movement
Moy Moy was born on the side of a road in the Indian Himalayas. Twelve weeks premature, she weighed just under a kilo. Underweight preemies are at high risk for having a disability, and the couple who adopted Moy Moy two weeks later weren’t surprised when she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. What did surprise […]