As an Associate Lecturer teaching first-year BA Architecture students at Central Saint Martins (CSM), I continually strive to engage my studio of 13/14 students within the constraints of my teaching hours and prescribed project briefs. Last year, I noticed that students struggled most when required to include accessible level changes, such as lifts or ramps, in their final design project. Many questioned the necessity of these ‘features’, expressing concern that they “ruined the design” or explaining that they are designing for someone who was “fully mobile.” These conversations were difficult to navigate as I advocated for fair and just design for all. Yet, I recognised a fundamental gap: my students lacked the critical awareness and applied empathy necessary to understand inclusive design as anything beyond a frustrating technical requirement.
My Positionality
As a tutor in my fifth year of teaching at CSM, I also work in industry as a qualified architect, focusing on social justice in the built environment and on design quality through people-centred places and community agency. My own architectural education offered limited space to explore equitable design critically, and it was only through professional practice that I recognised the industry’s paradox: seeking designers who create for people yet providing little framework for understanding what this truly means. This paradox drives my commitment to expanding the understanding of inclusive design beyond mobility and physical accessibility to encompass the multiplicity of human experience.
As a woman of colour, born and raised in London, I have lived and industry experience in the field I am exploring, thus I am conscious of how my positionality shapes this research. I strive to create and hold space for others’ stories and lived experiences to influence collective learning, deliberately removing myself from the centre whilst acknowledging my dual role as tutor-researcher.
Why This Matters: Inclusive Design as Social Justice
This issue connects directly to the BA Architecture course’s manifesto, which “embeds racial, social and environmental justice through a curriculum that centres on care, climate, cooperation and agency” (CSM, 2024). The course overview emphasises that “architecture is about people and how we interact with our environments” and promotes “responsibility beyond the client and understanding the consequences of actions for people and planet.”
Yet when my students dismiss accessible design features as aesthetic inconveniences, they reveal a troubling disconnect between these stated values and their emerging design practice. As Boys (2014) argues, disability and access are not simply technical problems to be ‘solved’ with ramps and lifts, but fundamental questions about how we understand bodies, space, and belonging. When students design only for “fully mobile” users, they perpetuate exclusion and fail to recognise design as inherently political and ethical.
Research-Led Approach
This Action Research Project explores how I might support students in developing the critical consciousness necessary for socially just architectural practice. By observing colleagues’ teaching methodologies and reflecting on my students’ learning needs, I have created a research question focused on ethically led debates, lived experience, and case study reflection as pedagogical tools for nurturing empathy, reflexivity, and inclusive design thinking. The following blog posts will document this journey.
For context, this blog post is supported by an appendix document of research notes, providing more in-depth enquiry and positionality.
References
Boys, J. (2014) Doing Disability Differently: An Alternative Handbook on Architecture, Dis/ability and Designing for Everyday Life. London: Routledge.
Central Saint Martins (2024) BA (Hons) Architecture Course Overview. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/subjects/architecture-spatial-and-interior-design/undergraduate/ba-hons-architecture-csm#course-overview (Accessed: 26 October 2025).
Central Saint Martins (2024) A Manifesto for Spatial Practices at Central Saint Martins. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/190112/Spatial-Practices_Manifesto.pdf (Accessed: 26 October 2025).