On Thursday, Oct. 16, the symposium Adapt/Evolve: A Cross-Disciplinary Exploration of Inclusive Design, brought designers, activists, academics, students, and alumni together in the Katie Murphy Amphitheatre to address the challenge and opportunity of adaptive design.
The event, which complemented the ongoing Adapt/Evolve exhibition in FIT’s Art and Design Gallery, focused on users with unique physical, visual, or auditory needs, featured executives from the Adaptive Design Association (ADA), OFS, Open Style Lab, and Women on Wheels, along with working professionals in children’s wear, architecture, interior design, and intimate apparel.
Here are three major themes they raised.
Adaptive design isn’t just for the “disabled”
One in six people globally has a disability, but the audience for adaptive design is larger even than this population.
The adaptive underwear brand Slick Chicks counts many fans of its Velcro-closure bras and side-opening underwear, not just the mobility-restricted wearers it was originally designed for. “Adaptive clothing should be mainstream. It has huge potential,” said founder Helya Mohammadian, Fashion Design ’04.
Jennifer Carpenter, founding principal of Verona Carpenter Architects, demonstrated how adapting a historic Princeton University building to add a wheelchair ramp resulted in a larger, airier entryway that was open and welcoming, in addition to being ADA-compliant.
Inclusivity is an approach, not a result
For a product or space to succeed, the user must be included from the very beginning of a project—not looped in near the end once most design decisions have been made.
“Co-design is absolutely essential to the things we make not only functioning practically on the level they need to but also feeling right and looking right and fitting the space they’re going to be in,” said Eric Gottshall, Fine Arts ’13, a designer at the Adaptive Design Association. Two products the ADA co-designed closely with their clients are a custom wheelchair that panelist Tamara Morgan recently used to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and a supine stander, a supportive device to help a toddler with cerebral palsy develop the strength to stand up.
Disabilities aren’t always visible
True inclusivity means considering neurodivergent visitors who might find a space too loud or visually overwhelming or a fabric unpleasant to the touch. Solutions can include putting easy-to-read wayfinding signs at a library; embedding sound-dampening fabric inside a ceiling; or creating stylish children’s clothes out of weighted fabrics to relieve anxiety. —Irina Ivanova
The Adapt/Evolve exhibition at FIT’s Art and Design Gallery closes Oct. 26. Find out more at fitnyc.edu/gallery.