An architecture of accessibility: An urban house for a small town

Abstract

The accessibility of architecture involves the inherent ability of the mind and body to approach, use, and communicate with the built environment by admitting that the experiences gathered in a place are significant to the individual. An urban house for six families, inserted within the vacant floors of an historic commercial building, attempts to restructure the events of the intimate downtown environment by transposing the familiarity of the long-lived rural landscape into a new program. By analyzing the repetitive events, objects, attitudes, histories, etc. of the known environment and acknowledging the individual as intuitively active, the architecture progresses toward accessibility. As the building reveals itself to the perceiving inhabitant, the architecture and that individual are brought together through the continuous evolution of a shared vocabulary