ABLEIST CITY SYMPOSIUM

The Ableist City Symposium exists because the built environment still excludes, and because “universal design” isn’t nearly universal enough. Since 2002, the symposium has grown into a space where disabled voices are not just included—they lead. Researchers, practitioners, and people with lived experience of disability come together to dismantle architectural ableism, confront lazy standards, and develop tools for real-world change.

Across its three iterations, the symposium has evolved from a critique of inclusive design studio culture into a radical conversation about education, access, and the systemic failure of policy, planning, and construction to accommodate the complexity of human experience.

The 2023 symposium marked a turning point with its first international keynote speaker, Honorary Associate Professor Jean Hewitt (UCL, Büro Happold), whose work on neurodiverse design is reshaping British standards. Other highlights included Professor Ben Cleveland on inclusive education environments and WA Senator Jordan Steele-John, who closed the symposium with the kind of political clarity—and quiet, devastating charm—that left the audience with more than a few hearts pounding. His call for architectural accountability in disability policy wasn’t just moving. It was a blueprint for action.

The symposium is free, hybrid, unapologetically inclusive, and fundamentally activist. It doesn’t just start conversations. It calls them to account.

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Accessibility in Practice

Since 2020, Dr. Kirsten Day and Dr. Andrew Martel have co-led neurodiverse design studios at the Melbourne School of Design. These studios are built on co-design, not simulation—because no student learns the realities of disability by using a wheelchair for ten minutes. Our position is clear: real engagement with people with lived experience of disability is not optional. It’s non-negotiable. Our studios are supported by grants from the Melbourne Disability Institute, allowing us to bring in access consultants, support workers, and lived-experience contributors—and to pay them for their time.

2024 Project: Co-Designing with People with Intellectual Disability

In 2024, we partnered with Flying Fox, a disability inclusion organisation, to lead a co-design studio focused on engaging with individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID). This project was supported by funding from both the Melbourne Disability Institute and the Alastair Swayn Foundation, the latter specifically awarded to develop design thinking protocols for co-design with people with intellectual disability.

The studio brought together architecture students, people with ID, and access experts to explore how the built environment can reflect the lived realities of neurodiverse and intellectually disabled communities. We collaborated with Jenna Cohen (Honeycomb Access and Design), Madeleine Granland (Buro Happold, UK), and the team at Flying Fox to push back against the narrow constraints of current standards.

The National Construction Code (NCC) and AS1428—as well as the NDIS SDA design guidelines—continue to exclude the specific spatial and cognitive needs of people with intellectual disability. Our studio challenged that absence directly, using the co-design process to develop actionable proposals that could inform future revisions of Australia’s building codes and standards.

This work extends our ongoing research into inclusive design education, neurodiversity, and the structural failures of existing access policy. It demonstrates that when disabled people lead, design doesn’t just improve—it transforms.

Selected Publications

Day, K. (2025). “Designing Public Spaces as Sensory Environments.” Architect Victoria.

Day, K. M., & Martel, A. (2024). “Neurodiversity in Australian Architecture.” Architect Victoria.

Day, K., & Martel, A. (2024). “Neurodiversity.” In Routledge Handbook of High-Performance Workplaces, 148–159. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781003328728-15

Martel, A., Day, K., Jackson, M. A., & Kaushik, S. (2023). “The 5-Kilometre Neighbourhood.” Reimagining Public Spaces, Ethics Press, 142–154.

Day, K., & Martel, A. (2022). “An Architecture of Inclusion.” Architectural Science and User Experience, 127–134.

Day, K., & Martel, A. (2021). “Designing for Neurodiversity.” ARCOM Conference Proceedings, 67–76.

Day, K., & Martel, A. (2021). “The Home as a Work-life Hub.” CIB W099 & W123 Conference Proceedings, 256–265.

Martel, A., Day, K., Jackson, M. A., & Kaushik, S. (2020). “Beyond the Pandemic.” Archnet-IJAR, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.1108/ARCH-10-2020-0225