Design for Inclusion

Design for inclusion is central to our practice. Some years ago, I was the project architect at Haverstock Associates for schools in England designed for students with severe emotional and physical disabilities and autistic spectrum disorders.

On those projects, it was clear to me that while some features (such as ceiling hoists and hydrotherapy pools) were there to meet the specific needs of this population, many of the design approaches and principles we were using made the spaces more welcoming for everyone. These included tactile wayfinding, controlled natural light and reduced glare.

Following a checklist of door widths, tactile paving and strobe alarms is not enough to design for inclusion. We should instead seek to make places that are welcoming and that are enlivened with interest for multiple senses: touch, through shape and texture; smell, through aromatic planting; vision, through shape, shadow, colour contrast and lighting control; sound, through materials and forms that help to amplify or dampen voices, footfalls or raindrops.

Recently, WORKSHOP collaborated with education and evaluation consultant Metrein on a project for the Government of St. Lucia. To meet their mandate of inclusion, the government is revamping the nation’s education system to make it more responsive to the needs of all learners.

The integration of educational processes with built infrastructure is critical to effective education for children with special needs, but it benefits all children.

With a full architectural and engineering team, we visited nine secondary schools and five special education centres in St. Lucia and reviewed their existing conditions. We integrated our findings with those from Metrein’s research and surveys, to jointly provide recommendations on institutional and infrastructural improvements to better support special education provision in mainstream schools in the country.

The initial findings were tested and refined through meetings and focus groups with parents, students, teachers, school leadership and Department of Education staff. Our work included drafting design standards and details for how the schools could be upgraded to better integrate students with special needs; improvements in technical and vocational training laboratories; and overall upgrades to secondary schools and special education centres.

St. Lucia Schools Review Infrastructure Team: Helena Grdadolnik, David Colussi, Kellie Chin, Tony Li from WORKSHOP; Michael L. St. Hill Architects + Planners, Theobalds Consulting, Sandy Brown West Indies Consulting and RLB St. Lucia

Text by David Colussi, Director at WORKSHOP

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