David Gissen on the Architecture of Disability

David Gissen on the Architecture of Disability

From Design Emergency by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli

July 22, 2025 · 37 min · Season 5 · Episode 8

About this episode

David Gissen discusses how disability can reshape our understanding of architecture.

Architecture’s traditional approach to disability revolves around “fixing problems” by securing adaptations that will allow disabled people to access the ideal world of full biocapacity. Architect and scholar David Gissen wants to “shift the conversation about disability away from a focus on the problems of a disabled user and their problems engaging with rooms and bathrooms and sidewalks,” he explains, and toward the acknowledgment that weakness and impairment are woven into human and natural history. In his 2023 book The Architecture of Disability and in this conversation with Paola, David explores how disability can be seen as a lens through which to reinterpret architecture itself. Access is not enough. Gissen doesn’t ask how we can include disabled people in the built environment; he asks how the built environment might be reimagined entirely if we began with disability as a starting point and used it as a generative lens for a better future––for all bodies. You can find images related to this interview on our Instagram grid @design.emergency. Please join us for future episodes of Design Emergency when we will hear from other global design leaders who, like David, are at the…

People in this episode

Host: Paola Antonelli

Guest: David Gissen

Topics covered

  • architecture
  • disability
  • design
  • accessibility
  • human history
  • reimagining spaces

Keywords

  • disability
  • architecture
  • accessibility
  • biocapacity
  • design
  • human history
  • built environment

Sponsors

Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Design Emergency

Books & works: The Architecture of Disability

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