Missing in Architecture Missing in Architecture

DOING DIS/ABILITY DIFFERENTLY IN ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION AND PRACTICE

Jos Boys/The DisOrdinary Architecture Project

Trained in architecture, Jos Boys' interests include learning spaces and the social aspects of architecture and design, explored through research, journalism, teaching, photography, community-based practice and consultancy. She was co-founder of Matrix feminist architects and has written extensively on relationships between gender and architecture.

More recent projects have been concerned with exploring how to open up 'discursive spaces' that enable different articulations of material landscapes to intersect critically and creatively.  This is about making a difference; both by informing wider debates around the design of the built environment, and by improving the quality of experiences of architecture and space for disadvantaged and marginalised groups in society. Jos is now involved in a series of educational and community-based collaborations exploring how to re-think relationships between architecture and disability, in particular with the group Architecture-InsideOut (www.architecture-insideout.co.uk). This has included an Arts Council funded project bringing together disabled and Deaf artists as tutors with interior architecture students at the University of Brighton, entitled Discursive Spaces (www.discursivespaces.co.uk) and a CETLD-funded research project developing new kinds of resources on disability for architectural tutors and students called So What is Normal? (www.sowhatisnormal.co.uk). Also see her website at www.josboys.co.uk.