In collaboration with Red Cross in Honiara Special Education Unit, we're recovering school grounds destroyed during recent Solomon Island storms. By reframing ideas of play from a fixed equipment to an urban farm adventure, we aimed to build resilience and sustainable life skills that lead to career opportunities for students with disabilities, teachers, and families. The Red Cross initially approached us for advice on the selection of play equipment for kids with disabilities. While there are a number of accessible play units on the market, what we were concerned about is the value added...
In this article, we share our insights on building compliance in the hope that a little background knowledge and theory will enable you to drive the design processes rather than simply apply standards. Using the recent changes to the BCA 2015 we illustrate how the building codes and standards work and explore ways you can use this knowledge in practice to promote greater efficiency through the architectural design and construction cycle. BCA 2015 ACCEPTANCE: understanding agreeing with the law The BCA 2015 is for the first time free to download and print. Remember 'WANTED' posters...
The Royal Mail Hotel brief was to do the impossible, turn a country pub into an epicure and ecotourism mecca. Using access, urban health and sustainability principles, the RMH underwent transformation and continues to grow in size, patronage and notoriety from the core ideals established 15 years ago. Before we started the population was about 250 odd bods. Dunkeld today has grown to a small town of 400 and while not a city, the towns folk are world class highly skilled highly educated and fast heading to double its initial size. http://youtu.be/06TD8j8v-_Q Economic renewal for a...
Lifts generate a lot of interest and excitement in a building and add value to place in the way they can quite dramatically improve the flow of people and goods. Selecting the right lift is a complex mix of people, situation, property finance and regulation so expect to be confused and at a loss for words. Platform lifts elevators and escalator access Get started with the basics; In the interests of public safety and disability - usability, our lift and elevators regulation is on par with motor vehicle regulation and so too are the cost. In comparison with a family car, the price of a...
Selecting access consultants When selecting access consultants it's important to consider fees and construction industry experience. Our top three criteria for selecting access consultants are: qualifications and experience Design experience availability, and fee scale Selecting Access consultants based on skill-set, qualifications, and experience This is the number one criteria for selecting access consultants, but most overlooked. Obviously, the skill set that you hire must be the right match for the tasks to be performed. In Australia, we tend to engage our mates or...
The objective of the disability access to premises standard is to ensure that dignified, equitable, cost effective and reasonably achievable access to buildings, and facilities and services is provided for people with disability. In practice; it's helpful to see capital A Architecture and Access within the same human rights equation. Our Human-rights aims are to provide equitable access, shelter people from harm, and create quality- sustainable- world experiences for living with dignity. The goal is to integrate access with the design so any required facilities don't become...
Access to Premises Standard or just Premises Standard is the abridged name for the Disability Access to Premises (Building) Standard 2010 document referenced within the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act of 1992 (DDA). The Premises Standard is intended to give greater legal weight to the provisions for disability access within the Building Code of Australia (BCA), and in practice, the Premises Standard mutually recognises the BCA and Visa Versa, meaning that compliance with the BCA is to comply with the DDA. Premises Standards History Immediately following the introduction of the...
The Access to Premises Standard Part 4 Exceptions provides limited concessions for circumstances where avoiding discrimination would impose unjustifiable hardship. In this situation an unjustifiable hardship disability access case is put to a government appointed panel of building professionals who then consider the merits of the case. "In determining what constitutes unjustifiable hardship, all relevant circumstances are to be taken into account. They include, relevantly, the nature of the benefit or detriment likely to accrue to, or be suffered by, the persons concerned, the effect...
At Sixes And Sevens Getting access to cafe bars and restaurants is never easy for reason there nearly always in heritage buildings and interesting niche places such as alleyways and basements, which makes our job all the more interesting. Starting a new bar or cafe can also means a change of use for the building and this causes some confusion around attaining planning approvals when the authority asks for compliance with the DDA and Access to Premises (buildings) Standard, which relates to changing the building fabric and not the building use per se. Its this loose...
The first clause of every BCA chapter invites designers to develop comparable alternate solutions to the BCA using the relevant Performance Requirements. There's really no excuse for an architect to blame the buildings codes for their designs looking monotonous for the BCA explicitly invites diversity. The main reasons architects rely on building codes for design solutions is that it's expedient to roll out the pattern book and there's a level of certainty around approvals when applying the standard. We generally find that if any alternative to the BCA is not as cost effective as...