What is inclusive architecture? Our guide to the design term of our times

Speaking at a 1984 dinner honouring the Indian architect Charles Corea, the then Prince of Wales, set out a damning critique of contemporary architecture. He labelled a yet-to-be-built tower designed by Mies van der Rohe as 'yet another giant glass stump' and likened ABK Architects’ proposed extension to the National Gallery to 'a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend.' Both projects were aborted, and the heir-in-waiting’s speech is remembered as a devastating attack on the architecture profession. But was it?

Many accounts of that infamous dinner miss the fact that, before turning to his carbuncle quips, Prince Charles had taken a very different tone. He had noted, for example, the potential of housing co-operatives to empower inner city residents; complimented the 'socially useful' architect Ted Cullinan as 'a man after my own heart'; and lamented how few buildings were accessible to wheelchair users. 'To be concerned about the way people live, about the environment they inhabit and the kind of community that is created by that environment,' he declared, 'should surely be one of the prime requirements of a really good architect.' Far from an all-out attack on the profession, the future King was really calling for more inclusive architecture.

What is inclusive architecture?

'Inclusive architecture' is a big term. It’s a vast catch-all umbrella for any urban practice which attempts to better support the wellbeing of historically marginalised groups. Often misunderstood simply as a technical discipline of adding accessibility ramps, handrails, and the like, truly holistic, inclusive design is a more expansive and exciting field spanning everything from the invention of the modern kitchen to the future of education. So huge is the scope and variety of inclusive architecture that no one article could comprehensively cover every dimension of it, but design history is littered with inspiring and instructive examples.

One branch of inclusive architecture that seeks to empower women and people of minority genders is feminist architecture. Matrix Design Co-operative were key figures in the movement during the 1980s, running a non-hierarchical feminist design agency which used participatory processes to create buildings for diverse clients. Their landmark book, Making Space: Women and the Man Made Environment is a manifesto cataloguing how city design in the 20th century often ignored the needs of women, parents and children. Many male designers have also striven to create feminist architecture.

The 1982 Mothers’ House by Aldo van Eyck in Amsterdam, for example, is a charismatic institution providing accommodation and support for single mums and their children. Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, the investor of the first built-in kitchens in Frankfurt, could also be celebrated as a feminist designer, given how her clever labour-saving furniture emancipated thousands of housewives from many hours of domestic toil.

Another approach to inclusive architecture is through child-centred design. Caring architects have rightly realised how children are excluded by the modern cityscape. While many designs for kids resort to gaudy, colourful paint rather than more sincere attempts to understand what young people need, the best child-led architects have created meaningful work without patronising their young clients.

The immense 'fog forest' in Tokyo’s Showa Kinen Park by Atsushi Kitagawara Architects, for example, provides an incredibly generous landscape for open-ended play. Elsewhere, the German architect Peter Hubner designed schools in collaboration with their future students, using 1:20 spatial models to sketch classroom designs in 3D. More recently, the Reggio School in Madrid by Office for Political Innovation was also designed in dialogue with its pupils and features an indoor tropical jungle to help science teaching.

A particularly complex theme for inclusive architects is race. How can architecture better express and include the ethnic, faith and cultural diversity of diaspora communities? One answer to that question is the Rebuild Foundation founded by artist Theaster Gates, which has restored derelict buildings in Chicago, transforming them into civic institutions celebrating black culture. In Gates’ work, the line between whether the architecture itself is intrinsically inclusive or if it is the way the spaces and places he has transformed are put to use that makes them inclusive is deliberately blurry.

Historic philanthropic architecture like almshouses were built by wealthy patrons to support the less fortunate, but rarely took into account the views of those they were supposedly there to serve. A recurring theme within the field of modern inclusive architecture today, however, is the centrality of developing designs in consultation with those who will actually use them. In creating the Mount Pleasant hostel, Peter Barber Architects, for example, worked with homeless people whose lived experience of using the previous hostel was invaluable in shaping designs for the upgraded facility. In a similar way, good architects no longer simply consider the needs of physically disabled and neurodiverse users but actively seek input from expert design consultants with direct experience.

A giant and still-evolving constellation of practices, perspectives and priorities, inclusive architecture has shifted gears from well-meaning projects made for people to buildings and places made with people. The real mark of the best inclusive architects, from Matrix to Gates, is marrying their professional skills and characterful design talent with the embodied wisdom of the communities they seek to empower – creating designs that are more than the sum of their parts.