Architecture still excludes. Not by accident — by system. Building codes that ignore cognitive access. Standards that treat disability as a checklist. Professional cultures that design for an idealised body that doesn’t exist. My research asks what happens when we stop treating inclusion as a compliance exercise and start treating it as a design problem — one that requires disabled people to lead.

Since 2020, I have co-led this work with Dr Andrew Martel at the Melbourne School of Design, supported by grants from the Melbourne Disability Institute and the Alastair Swayn Foundation. Our position is clear: real engagement with people with lived experience of disability is not optional. It is non-negotiable.

Ableist Cities Symposium

The Ableist Cities Symposium exists because “universal design” isn’t nearly universal enough. Since its inception, the symposium has grown into a space where disabled voices don’t just contribute — 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.

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 2025 symposium continued to build the conversation, expanding the network of practitioners, researchers, and advocates working to dismantle ableist assumptions embedded in Australian built environment policy and practice.

Ableist Cities 2026: Sensory Perception — 4 December 2026. The next symposium focuses on sensory environments and the spatial experiences of people whose perception of the built environment is not accounted for in current design frameworks. Details and registration coming soon.

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

I co-lead the symposium through the ABP Disability Hub at the University of Melbourne, which I co-chair.

Co-Design Research: Empower by Design (2024–2025)

In partnership with Flying Fox, a disability inclusion organisation, we led a co-design studio focused on engaging with individuals with intellectual disabilities. 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 intellectual disabilities, 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.

The National Construction Code 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 produced the report Empower by Design: Enabling Innovative Inclusion of Disabled People in Design (Day & Martel, 2025), published through the Alastair Swayn Foundation. The report provides a practical co-design toolkit for designers working with people with intellectual disability — a resource that didn’t previously exist in the Australian context.

Ongoing neurodiverse design studios

Since 2020, Dr Martel and I 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 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.

This work demonstrates that when disabled people lead, design doesn’t just improve — it transforms.

What’s Next

In 2027, the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning launches the Interior Design major within the Bachelor of Design program. I am the Pathway Coordinator for this major, responsible for curriculum architecture, subject development, and industry engagement. I bring over a decade of experience in interior architecture education, including five years as Course Director of Interior Architecture at Swinburne University of Technology, where I led program development, accreditation, and industry partnerships.

The major includes a suite of new subjects spanning professional practice, design studios, and a colour studio, with Professional Practice for Interior Design coming online in Semester 2, 2027 as the first subject in the sequence. This subject embeds inclusive and neurodiversity-responsive design as core concerns within professional practice education — not as an add-on or elective. It pairs with my existing Architectural Practice subject in the Master of Architecture to create a coherent professional practice teaching portfolio where inclusion is structural, not optional.

Further subjects are confirmed for delivery from 2029.

Watch: Interior Design at the University of Melbourne

I also serve on the Melbourne Disability Institute Executive Committee and the Victorian Equity Accessibility Committee of the Australian Institute of Architects.

Selected Publications

Day, K.M. and Martel, A. (2025) Empower by Design: Enabling Innovative Inclusion of Disabled People in Design. Alastair Swayn Foundation. [Co-design toolkit]

Day, K. (2025) ‘Designing Public Spaces as Sensory Environments,’ Architect Victoria, pp. 20–21.

Day, K. and Martel, A. (2024) ‘Neurodiversity,’ in Routledge Handbook of High-Performance Workplaces. Routledge, pp. 148–159.

Martel, A., Day, K., Jackson, M.A. and Kaushik, S. (2023) ‘The 5-Kilometre Neighbourhood: Maximizing People with Disabilities’ Work-Life Opportunities,’ in Reimagining Public Spaces and Built Environments in the Post-Pandemic World. Ethics Press, pp. 142–154.

Day, K. and Martel, A. (2022) ‘An Architecture of Inclusion: Can the Profession Adapt to the Diversity of Design Demanded by People with a Disability?’ in Architectural Science and User Experience, pp. 127–134.

Day, K. and Martel, A. (2021) ‘Designing for Neurodiversity: Reimagining the Home for a COVID Normal Life,’ in Proceedings of the 37th Annual ARCOM Conference, pp. 67–76.

Day, K. and Martel, A. (2021) ‘The Home as a Work-life Hub: A Policy (and Design) Blackspot,’ in Proceedings of the Joint CIB W099 & W123 Annual International Conference, pp. 256–265.

Martel, A., Day, K., Jackson, M.A. and Kaushik, S. (2020) ‘Beyond the Pandemic: The Role of the Built Environment in Supporting People with Disabilities’ Work-Life,’ Archnet-IJAR, 15(1). ★ Literati Award Winner 2022