The Implementation of a National Observatory in Inclusive Design in PortugalDr. Fernando Moreira da Silva, PhD, National Coordinator of the Portuguese Inclusive Design Observatory; Project Coordinator and professor at Faculdade de Arquitectura, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Portugal AbstractThe Faculty of Architecture (FA) is partner of the Portuguese Design Centre (CPD) in an Inclusive Design project, along with Lisbon Municipality and the Portuguese Association for Visual Impairment People (ACAPO), mainly supported by EQUAL, a European research programme. In this project, which began in September 2002, FA is responsible for the creation of the National Observatory in Inclusive Design, which will be maintained at FA in the future. After September 2004 we are implementing the dissemination of the project issues and results by: workshops at the Universities and with the professionals involved in the built or natural environment from the point of view of its design, management or function; seminars covering all the Municipalities. IntroductionHaving as main objective to benefit people who are victims of discrimination (connected with sex, race, ethnic origin, religion and convictions, inabilities, age, sexual orientation) and inequality, EQUAL program acts on these public targets and also, on the development of the agents and enterprises/organizations, because there is no sustainable integration of the fragile groups without solid and competitive organizations which may assume their social responsibility. The Inclusive Design Observatory is a Research Project which objectives the systemization and cross information about the reality of the Inclusive design in Portugal, comparing with the realities of other countries, namely in the European Union. Project DevelopmentAs a frame to the different activities of the project, a data collection and organization of the existent information at national and international level as been made: Bibliography, legislation, web sites, institutional contacts and relevant case studies. The Observatory also developed an evaluation study about the existent competences in the country in the Inclusive design area, by an inquiry at national level, about the ResAP (2001)1 of the European Council, concerning:
During this project, the Observatory has been able to verify that the concept of Inclusive Design is unknown for a great number of people working directly with the graduation and post-graduation courses in architecture, landscape architecture, engineering, design, urban design, planning, survey, facilities management etc, or those who work at the municipalities allover the country. Even those courses contents don't have specific subjects in Design for All - there are however professors that aboard the concept during their classes. Project DisseminationThe direct feedback of the work done till the moment, allowed us to design the implementation of a great number of actions. A Web Site, for which production CPD (Portuguese Centre for Design) is responsible, will have a strong component of diffusion of the activities, as well as in the dissemination of information in the Inclusive Design area, with different products:
We want the Site to be exemplar in the application of the Inclusive design principles, proposing correct solutions to a large range of the population where one can find, necessarily, people normally in a disadvantage perceptive situation. Another objective is to create a post-graduation course in Inclusive Design, which project is being designed with the University of Salford (UK). With the dissemination of the Observatory and its politics, we also will try that every graduation course may have this subject area in its curriculum. So, we intend to promote workshops at the Universities and also with the professionals involved in the built or natural environment from the point of view of its design, management or function and for those involved in health care or support for disabled people in aspects of their daily life. We also want to implement regular work along with the members of the Disability Rights Committees. The municipalities are also a very important target for the product dissemination. So, the Inclusive Design Observatory intends to promote seminars covering the Municipalities all over the country, alerting for the importance of the subject area and its dissemination. In all these actions, we want to give a special emphasis to some important content, such as:
The intention is to demonstrate how design practice across a large range of disciplines can routinely adopt an inclusive approach if such factors are considered at the very beginning of the process. ConclusionsFor the prosecution of the Observatory objectives, a net of national and international contacts will be established, which will be the origin of a future Resource Centre in this area. The Observatory and the team working in the Universal Design area at FA (NID - Inclusive Design Nucleus) want to conduct more research, education and design projects on Inclusive Design and environmental access, as well as to become the nation's leader in developing, testing and propagating ideas and standards for Inclusive Design. Lisbon, July 2004 Fernando Moreira da Silva |