Integrating Disability in Township Architecture

What Is Architecture?

Photographed Floor Plans

Architecture as we all know in short is the science of integrating art and construction to engage with human needs and how they interact with their surroundings. It is the concept of maintaining functional and sustainable spaces that pleases the eye. Purohit, H. (2024)

How Often Do We Find Disability Being Integrated Within Our Township Residential Settings?

Residential Entrances With Not Ramps for The Wheelchair Bound

Rarely.

Our township settings have always offered underwhelming measurable site sizes that limits how far one can explore around Architecture. We are often set by boundary and building regulations that are counteractive with humans with disabilities, often forcing them to push their unique presence on a daily basis. Housing designs are often small or uniform with narrow doors, steep steps and inaccessible toilets.

Townships are packed with underdeveloped Architectural approaches offered by government institutions to consolidate the needs of the under privileged. Now this and the middle-class living within the township have not been offered accessible solutions to meet disable needs.

The issue stems from a complex combination of historical, spatial, social and economic factors. Apartheid era planning created segregated communities and overpopulated townships with little to no regard for accessibility. Coming from a middle-class family living in the township, I have lived to experience the sudden adjustment to accommodate living with a disabled person due to their biological physical changes.

Where Did That Leave Us?

Lounge Furniture Set Up To Accommodate a Persons of Wheelchair

We had to adjust and rearrange our furniture orientation to allow wheelchair circulation in the living room. We had to formulate a new plan to how the person can bathe themselves because they could not reach and roll in the shower. This is where one could suggest restructuring and shifting a couple of walls but unfortunately, we were limited by municipal regulations moreover our financial position, in essence widening the socio-economic constraints of having the inability to afford to build accessible features such as ramps, wider doors or accessible bathroom features.

Design For Accessibility

Minimal Residential Designs By The Government For The Low Income

In this case one would suggest intervention by Architects to adopt the possibility of old age disability in their design approaches. But then we take a look at government houses that are offered to low-income classes. The disability evaluation spectrum becomes largely uncomfortable. Houses are designed not only with regulated boundaries but are met with calculated financial limits, smaller cubicle bedrooms, kitchenettes, sizable lounge and a functional guest size loo. These are post-apartheid housing programs that replicated the same flawed laws served as a solution producing uniform cubical, small units that fail to accommodate persons with immobility.

In Short

Spatial Usage For A Wheelchair In An Existing Bathroom

Research further suggests that most homes are fond to large family spectrum making space usage furthermore small. Our socio-economic issues highlight the high populated density within townships comes with underfunding and informal building materials offered by the municipality. What Then? Intervention. Let's broaden the disability awareness in our small Architecture design approach. Architects along with government should hand in hand work towards applying research-based designs that will help elevate comfortable habitable spaces. How? We will discuss that on the next chapter.

Written By Kekeletso Motsieloa

Candidate Architectural Technologist @ TectArch

Kekelets@TectArch.co.za