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...
Have the Australian Standards become a design Crutch? It's of great concern to us to see architects leaning on building codes and standards as architectural templates instead of their own imagination and creativity. Any decent self respecting species on the planet knows that diversity is the key to survival so what's the evolutionary advantage of standardising design? It didn't work for Mao Zedong or Stalin and there's no evidence that stifling evolution will work for us and there's every reason to motivate our designers to innovate solutions to today's lifestyle problems. When to...
Any stairstep falls or even falls on the same level in public building should be taken seriously for reason that they never occur in isolation and the probability of more serious falls increases with time. We usually become involved in stairstep falls claims following a fall or near miss. If you've had a stairstep fall or have a business premises with problem staircase or ramps then we advise to follow up with a stair audit to identify the problem and take advice on fall prevention and control strategies. It's important to note that stairstep falls are rarely the fault of person or...
Workplaces often require areas greater than the AS 1428 access standard series and we're often asked about ramps within workplaces and Designers WHS 2012 duty of care which is reason for this guide note. The dimensions in AS 1428.1 were initially based on studies by J. Bails, Project report on the field testing of the Australian Standard 1428-1977 Part 1 and 2, Public Building Department of South Australia, 1983. It's important to remember that Bails research analysed the anthropometry of wheeled mobility users which is similar but different to workplace needs. While there's...
WHS in the home The general exemption for homes, dwellings, units apartments, houses. It’s a moot question whether a home is a workplace and therefore required to be safe and accessible. The community like to think of our house as a home and not a workplace and this is reflected in the exemption of most freestanding houses from the Premises Standards. There may be an issue in housing when a house becomes a workplace or an apartment building with accommodation and communal areas. However, generally speaking, the Premises standards doesn't extend to single dwellings, townhouses or...