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Photo by REED HUTCHINSON
Able-bodied students in the UCLA Extension landscape architecture program find out what it is like to negotiate a wheelchair around campus. The exercise teaches students the importance of designing spaces to accommodate people with disabilities.
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Future designers learn lesson on accessibility
BY JOHN FERRARI
UCLA Today
It looked innocuous enough to the uninitiated, but to students in Michael O’Brien’s UCLA Extension landscape architecture class Aug. 8, it was literally “the abyss” — eight formidable steps leading down to the Murphy Sculpture Garden that had to be bypassed by those in wheelchairs.
With construction barring the nearest ramp, where do they roll next? It took the students in wheelchairs several minutes to figure it out. They maneuvered over to another ramp and then into the garden, beyond which more troublesome steps awaited them.
The lesson that evening was an eye-opener for the 30 students who come to UCLA each week to learn how people — the disabled on this particular night — interact with their built environments.
To give them a firsthand experience of how design elements in public spaces can help or hinder people in wheelchairs — or, for that matter, anyone moving on something other than two feet — O’Brien had students in his “Human Factors in Landscape Architecture” course take turns moving around the campus in two wheelchairs. The course is a requirement in UCLA Extension’sLandscape Architecture certificate program.
Huffing and puffing their way through North Campus, these future landscape architects encountered not just construction, but uneven pavement and prickly plants that encroached on pathways.
That’s not to say UCLA gets bad marks for accessibility.
The campus has better than average accessibility, said Pete Lassen, pointing to Royce Hall as a fine example. Lassen, who was the guest speaker on the evening of the wheelchair exercise, is a paraplegic and architect who specializes in the adaptive reuse of older buildings.
Lassen noted that the campus’ hilly terrain and perennial construction can be a challenge to what he calls universal accessibility, the result of design that’s good for everyone, including children, the elderly and parents pushing strollers.
That’s one reason the campus is the perfect “lab” for the wheelchair demonstration. “UCLA is very good because you see the whole history of accessibility,” explained O’Brien, a zoning investigator for the Los Angeles Department of City Planning. “They’ve been retrofitting from year one. You can see how accessibility standards have changed.”
The lesson “raised my level of awareness entirely,” said Darin Morris after taking his turn in a wheelchair. “This was an awesome experience.”
Fellow student Yvonne English agreed, saying the tour made her realize how important landscape design details can be.
“Be really careful about the details — always think about what you’re doing,” O’Brien urged.
One of the students asked Lassen if accessible design will ever be perfect. The architect laughed.
“Maybe in five generations,” he said. “But it’s you guys who are out there designing right now, so I expect perfection.”
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