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Last year Doing Disability Differently by Jos Boys was published. My sensory description of Vals Therme, from Greta’s point of view, was included, as well as a critique of our Ramp House. I am now working with Katie Lloyd Thomas on Jos Boy’s follow up reader: our chapter The Ramp House: Building Inclusivity, will explore the planning, building and inhabitation of the ramp house as an ongoing process of inclusivity.

http://www.ribaj.com/intelligence/doing-disability-differently

http://www.architectural-review.com/doing-disability-differently/8668802.article

Thea MacMillan – Experiencing Zumthor

 The way that Zumthor’s spaces are perceived: in Vals Therme, each space has been considered sensorially; the searing heat of the 40° bath reflected by burning red terracotta walls, which change from highly glazed to porous rough at the line where the water laps, contrasted by the cool turquoise water of the central pool and the sharp air rolling down from the surrounding mountains to lie on top of the outdoor pool. Guided by the continuity of the touch of the changing stone in each changing space; offering different sensory experiences, using contrast and heightened touch, hearing, and smell.

Perception: coming into the space from above, the sound is first, then the weight of the leather curtain pushed aside, followed by smell. For anyone disabled who has learnt to use their senses differently to complete pictures, this place offers many different clues. The spatial configuration of open plan and smaller contained spaces and the connections between them, gives a complex aural feedback for the visually impaired to construct the space in their minds.

Movement through the spaces, whilst not supportive of all wheelchair users, with its slow long flat steps, provides added layers of sensory experience for those who can climb them. As this almost offers the inclusive experience of moving through changing space, it seems a missed opportunity not to have a ramp.

Thea McMillan 11/09/13

“Ultimately, of course, the aim is redefine what constitutes the normal [] ‘

The principle of the ramp house was to design and build a family home for a little girl who is a wheelchair user, where the whole house enables her to lead a barrier free included life. We are often confronted with the physical barriers that the built environment presents; in our own home we were able to design a fully inclusive place; using a ramp to access all levels, provides an equality of space to us all. We have designed spaces along the ramp, connecting both horizontally and vertically, so that the experience of the house changes as it unfolds.

The difference that the ramp makes is in how the spaces are experienced; this is both linear and sectional, and the opportunities to look back or forward into other spaces. The ramp contributes both width and height to each of the different pausing places along the way. As we inhabit the house, we can see how this provides variation, complexity, and flexibility in the everyday use of the house, how many spaces can be used concurrently and how it reaches its potential when it is inhabited: movement around it, by foot or on wheels brings the experience to life.

For a child who cannot move around independently, the connectivity of the spaces becomes all the more important. If Greta is in the living room, there are six different spaces that we can be in and move between, and she is still able to see and hear us, and communicate with us.’

“here, movement through the space is not separated out as ‘accessible circulation’ but formally interwoven with both how family life is lived, and with the multiple registers through which we engage with the material world simultaneously. Greta is neither a special case nor an unconsidered ‘anyone’: she is just one of the members of the family; as she says herself, ‘I am just a very busy eight year old and like everyone else, I just need a place which allows me to get on with things'” Jos Boys, Doing Disability Differently, Routledge.

Good to be included in Scottish Government’s inspirational designs webpage

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Built-Environment/AandP/InspirationalDesigns/ProjectType/Singlehouseurban/TheRampHouse

saltire plaque

We are delighted to have won a Saltire Housing Award for our Ramp House – it is now shining on the caithness wall at the front door. Here is what Lesley Riddoch, Chair of the Judging Panel said:

“We admired your determination to fit a house round you – not the other way round. You took a pint pot of a site and cleverly built a house just high enough to “borrow” views of all the fabulous gardens around. You created a house with a common way of moving about – not isolating your daughter into lifts and hoists and it works beautifully. Connecting with one another via the ramps inside you also connect directly with the street outside via that lovely wee breakfast window. The whole house breathes confidence in its location, in one another and in your neighbours. Wonderful.”

Every three months a magazine called life style drops through our letterbox. You can’t buy this in the shops for love nor money, but is sent out to the 400,000 motability car owners. Each issue has at least one story of people who have taken their circumstances and used them to make things more accessible for others as well as themselves. Ian thought that they might want to know about our story so emailed them, and we were interviewed by a lovely journalist who understood our situation through her own experience. Since the magazine came out we have had a number of really lovely comments and enquiries, just reminding us how many people are in similar circumstances to ours, needing inclusive environments designed for them. It seems we are becoming a specialist practice without trying. lifestyle ability 

A nice reminder that the wood awards are still open to submissions: not sure if they included our (already submitted) Ramp House as a challenge (beat this) or as a provocation (this is all we have so far). Either way its a bit of publicity, so we are not complaining. Ian’s entry was written from Greta’s point of view: the touch, sound and smell of the wood being just as important as how it looks: towards a sensory architecture.

Having just built our accessible family home, now seemed like as good a time as any to start up : we see every day how important it is that the built environment is made accessible to all, and so this has become our aim. Since moving in, we have had so many comments from friends and visitors that the ramp makes the house: on the one hand that they are not aware of it being an obviously ‘accessible’ house, but on the other hand how wonderful it is to have a ramp in a house (and could they have one too?). I think it is because the ramp makes you move around the house differently, and also because of the way that we have designed spaces off the ramp, these spaces connect, both visually and physically, differently. Its is proving to be a great house for children and a great party house: so many different places to stand and sit, whilst always being able to see who is there, and who is talking to whom.

So the idea that we could design spaces which are not only accessible to all, but also richer because of it, is a beginning for chambersmcmillan, and at the moment a very exciting thought. Since building our work desk last weekend, I have photographed (and Facebook posted) an image of the desk every day: I hope that this will document our progression, starting from an empty desk, lets see where this takes us.

day 1

day 2

d

day 3

d

day 4 cmcm

d

2 new colleagues

Thanks to a temporary ramp, Greta can now get into her new room on the first floor!Whilst the build is racing on everyday (regardless of all the rain) I am spending most of my time sourcing and applying to charities for funding to help us build the house. Unfortunately, over a year ago our local council stopped funding extensions to make houses accessible, and are now only able to support a wet room and a ramp up to the front door. Quite how families are expected to carry on using their family homes, when they need to carry their ever heavier children upstairs daily, I’m not sure. As a family with a child with additional support needs, it can get very wearing to constantly focus on the difficulties of life: we like to celebrate and enjoy all the things, large and small, that we find Greta and our whole family able to do. So I don’t want to dwell on the lack of support that the Council is able to provide. But it does mean that I am having to be creative in finding ways of funding this build (any suggestions welcome!). It is a really interesting process, and I am finding out about so many wonderful charities and foundations which have been set up, often due to people’s experiences, who provide so much help support and understanding for so many people. Unfortunately, a lot of charities don’t help with building adaptations: again I’m not sure why not, people’s homes are so important to them, and they need to work well in supporting and enabling them. It may seem as if we are in a very lucky situation of being able to build our own house, which we are, and we really appreciate all the support (and kind wishes) which we get from everyone we encounter; for us this is not only the best possibility, but the only possibility. To find a house in Portobello (where Greta is known and loved) which we could afford, and which we could then adapt to make it barrier-free would be impossible. Building from scratch gives us the chance to provide a house which will carry on supporting us as a family, and helping Greta’s growing independence into the future, but it also gives us the joy of seeing Greta enjoying the spaces of our home inclusively.

Any suggestions of creative fund raising ideas, please comment below.

One of the most important things about designing our accessible family home, was that it should be a place that belongs to the children as much as it does to us; the best way to ensure this is to include them in the design process

Greta’s bedroom

space for my toys

Bee making sure her bedroom is her bedroom

Bee’s fimo Chambers McMillan family

Bee describing the house

Bee looking in

T looking in

Greta red-lining plans

first Caithness wall

Stone:  Jura and Caithness

On the ground floor at the front of the building and around the entrance we are using Caithness stone.  Although from the very north of Scotland, it’s used to pave the streets of Edinburgh.

The Stone itself is extracted from a 3m high bed which lies under 4.5 – 9m of overburden. Caithness Flagstone is quarried from 16 principle layers split into a total of 49 individual flagstones, ranging in thickness between 20mm and 80mm .  It is from the Old Red Sandstone of Devonian age (370 million years old).

Stone can be expensive as a raw material and also in its laying.  To try and negotiate this fact, we used offcuts from paving stones which are in effect the ‘trimmings’.  These still need to be sawn cut to regularise them, but are about a third in cost of the riven faced stone.  The difficulty in laying comes from the varying heights of the stone which is a by-product of the natural bed thickness and requires the skill of a stonemason to piece the wall together.  Given the typical paving thicknesses are 40, 60 and 80mm, we decided to use these thicknesses to form courses similar to brickwork but at varying random lengths.  Beatrice came up with 4 coursing patterns and chose her favourite – which is being built (She also chose the purple window).  We like the horizontality of this layering and it is reminiscent of paintings by Caspar David Freidrich the German Romantic Landscape painter.

Visiting a Jura quarry just north of Munich for a commercial office project, the ‘travertine’ cut blocks, which cut the stone ‘through the bed’, were an extraordinary visual cross section through the earth itself.

Jura Limestone (meaning from the Jurassic period) contains visual fossilised evidence of the natural world as it was in the Mesozoic age approximately 150 million years ago.  Limestone is a sedimentary rock formed by layers of marine organisms deposited on the sea floor and compressed to create a stone with a variety of surface markings, meaning it is normally bed cut to uncover these natural formations such as Ammonites, Belemnites, Quartz Veins, Sponges, Corals and Feather Stars.  There are 22 layers or ‘beds’.

We’re using this in the wetroom, which is unusual as the stone is porus, however the quarry were able to source a much denser stone for this purpose (apparently a much younger stone which seems counter intuitive).  As a finish it has a 220 hone on the walls, and an 80 hone on the floor to provide a good slip resistance.

Having visited the quarry and being able to see and understand the product and production process, allowed us to order direct, which kept the costs tight (saying that a considerable percentage went to the haulage firm) and afforded us the Jura for the price of a mid-range ceramic tile.  It should be arriving on site in the next week or so.

I have always been interested in left over spaces in buildings: I have seen children delighting in using these spaces. Having a ramp meandering its way around a two story house, there are lots of left over spaces created. Some of these we are only becoming really aware of as the building progresses, despite having designed with models, which should have revealed them all, but the reality of this variety of people sized spaces is constantly surprising us. We designed so that every turn in the ramp would create its own unique pausing space: the reality of this, will only become clear once we use the space

There’s something about windows that have a very finished feel to them. Something to look out of, at the very least.

And a front door!

Thanks to a temporary ramp, Greta can now get into her new room on the first floor!Whilst the build is racing on everyday (regardless of all the rain) I am spending most of my time sourcing and applying to charities for funding to help us build the house. Unfortunately, over a year ago our local council stopped funding extensions to make houses accessible, and are now only able to support a wet room and a ramp up to the front door. Quite how families are expected to carry on using their family homes, when they need to carry their ever heavier children upstairs daily, I’m not sure. As a family with a child with additional support needs, it can get very wearing to constantly focus on the difficulties of life: we like to celebrate and enjoy all the things, large and small, that we find Greta and our whole family able to do. So I don’t want to dwell on the lack of support that the Council is able to provide. But it does mean that I am having to be creative in finding ways of funding this build (any suggestions welcome!). It is a really interesting process, and I am finding out about so many wonderful charities and foundations which have been set up, often due to people’s experiences, who provide so much help support and understanding for so many people. Unfortunately, a lot of charities don’t help with building adaptations: again I’m not sure why not, people’s homes are so important to them, and they need to work well in supporting and enabling them. It may seem as if we are in a very lucky situation of being able to build our own house, which we are, and we really appreciate all the support (and kind wishes) which we get from everyone we encounter; for us this is not only the best possibility, but the only possibility. To find a house in Portobello (where Greta is known and loved) which we could afford, and which we could then adapt to make it barrier-free would be impossible. Building from scratch gives us the chance to provide a house which will carry on supporting us as a family, and helping Greta’s growing independence into the future, but it also gives us the joy of seeing Greta enjoying the spaces of our home inclusively.

Any suggestions of creative fund raising ideas, please comment below.

Saturday was Greta’s eighth birthday (baking) party, and as always we had invited more children than really fit in the house, so we were hoping and praying for sunshine so that we could release them all into the garden. It wasn’t looking good, with a particularly wet week leading up to the party, but then amazingly just as the first guests arrived, the sun came out too, and the garden was filled with excited children dressed as spidermen, devils in red wigs and princesses. Then later in the evening, the calm after the storm, I noticed that our front garden had become greener and darker, as the rain returned and it poured. Immediately I thought of our friends who were brave enough to be doing the moonwalk, and hoped that it would have rained itself out by midnight. I’ve since heard that nothing could have dampened the atmosphere of the ‘walked’ marathon through the night.

The next day we walked down to the site, to find that Bee’s wish had been granted, and there was now a swimming pool where the kitchen had been.

People are often amazed that two architects have managed to design a home together, not to mention including their two children in the design process, but I always tell them, it was easy. And it was easy for one reason: we had such a strong brief with a driving reason to build, that every design decision was a delightful realisation of a place that our daughter would be able to use without having to ask for exceptions to be made. So much of her life is frustrated by obstacles in her way; the main ones are physical, environmental, spatial ones, something which as architects we feel ashamed of, but also empowered to do something about. We are in the exceptional position of understanding through our family’s experience what hinders, and knowing, as designers, how to put that right. So when you turn this to the problem of designing a (barrier free) family home it suddenly becomes an enabling process rather than a problem.

Having to think differently around how we use spaces, and how we move around them starts to produce unusual places. I was already interested in how children move around in, and perceive spaces through my PhD research (link), and had often noticed that children will choose to run up a ramp (then often jumping down the stairs if they are on the other side). For our daughter this movement through spaces is just as important, and the way for her to be able to access this experience is by designing a ramp that she can negotiate in her many wheeled vehicles (link bike, 4 wheeler, wheelchair). But once you calculate the ramp needed to climb from a ground floor to a first, it quickly becomes apparent that the ramp will need to do more than just that. So we have designed a ramp which unwraps to connect to a number of different spaces, each of which can be used along the way.

By designing the house as spaces arranged around a ramp, we have enabled Greta to join us in a full experience of the spaces of our everyday lives. Whilst many public and private spaces still act as a barrier to her full inclusion, this house provides an environment which she and her friends and family can experience, learn from and enjoy together. Designing all the spaces to work as part of the movement along the ramp, with the ramp as central to the spaces, allows the architecture to develop in a rich spatial unfolding, whilst also enabling us all to use the house together.

Involving the children in the design allows them to explore creatively what they need and what they desire. It also means that their occupation of the spaces once built will become another part of this process.

Whilst all the excitement of the steel structure was happening, we were also flat out getting our current house ready to sell. This meant many late nights painting and organising, and then finally last weekend we were ready to let people in.

blossom living

Sitting, waiting in our very tidy house was a bit like waiting for a party to start, but without the food and drink. We had no idea if anyone would come, and what they would think. Fortunately the house was soon buzzing, and at one point Bee had to take on the role of tour guide for us: her main aim was to show the viewer all the best climbing places in the house. So now a total of fourteen sets of people have viewed the house, and we have had some really lovely comments, now we just have to wait and see.

snow blossom

This house has been a very lucky house for us, and we would not be moving if we didn’t have to. I still remember the first time we came to see it, where everything was painted dark brown and green, the front garden and back lane were just tarmac, and all the doors opened out onto the crowded landing: and Ian and I stood upstairs and discussed whether we could make it work: I’m so glad we took the risk.

blossom lights

I remember coming here with Bee when it was a building site, with our ridiculously ambitious 5 week schedule, and she was most fascinated by the whole in the bathroom floor which looked down into the living room. I also remember sitting on our red velvet sofa in the kitchen with my feet up, knitting, 8 and a half months pregnant with Greta, whilst Ian unpacked every single box we owned, which filled the whole space of the sitting room.

squirrels

Greta was born in this house, and we were lucky enough to have been able to keep her, and to be able to carry on living here and making more good memories. This is a house that has both wonderful family memories, and also wonderful family rituals of yearly parties, birthdays and anniversary celebrations. We can take those family rituals with us to our next home, and we hope to be able to hand the house on to somebody who will cherish it and enjoy it just as much.

http://m.espc.com/?saleType=Sale&beds=3&locType=text&area=Portobello&radius=0.5&longitude=0&latitude=0&house_type=12&min_price&max_price&search=Search&sort=price-ASC&propref=312736&cs=1&img=0#propDetails

blossom living

blossom family

blossom globe

Blossom Bee

blossom

blossom 360º

squirrel pie

Cottage Pie

Guest Blogger Ian McMillan writes:  Working on projects where the Net/ Gross efficiency of the floorplates and the extent of circulation versus usable space is paramount,  And having a ramp through the house, I was somewhat reluctant to crunch out the figures.  Our current house is very tight with space, but we’ve optimised it to 50% living accommodation, smaller bedrooms and a quirky ‘open plan’ bathroom  – and all in 72m2, which is below the 78m2 standard UK house size for a 3 bed house.  The new proposal, although 140m2, sounds absurdly huge but it’s just the size of a standard Danish family house.  Which is still well below the States and Australia.  So where is all this extra 62m2?

The figures below show that we’ve still kept the bedrooms at a standard size (but have carved the space away above them and introduced rooflights to make them feel brighter and more spacious), and like our current house we’ve tried to optimise the space for the living accommodation.  But rather than one single space, it’s fragmented into different levels which come off the various levels of the ramp.

Squirrel Cottage Areas m2                    UK Cottage Areas m2

Average Pie

The ramp itself is the biggest space user being 41.3m3 and accounting for 31% of the building, as opposed to the typical house where the stair and any corridors would account for 11%.  This is a big spatial investment, however as the ramp is integrated into the house (as opposed to being a ‘bolt on’), it will spatially become part of the living accommodation.  Saying that, It will be interesting to see how we physically use this sloped surface aside from its primary purpose of circulation!

Rem slope

rem slope 2

just a week ago there was nothing on our site but hidden drains and foundations. Then Johnstone Rigging arrived, with their cherry picker and 35ft crane (see previous post for how they negotiated it into the lane!), and ten ton of steel, and within three days we have the structure of our house .We can now stand in the tea drinking space and look across, through the sun room, to the garden. We can imagine how we will run up and down the ramp, and we can stand at our front door. Obviously this still takes a certain amount of imagination (and still needs months of filling in), but for the first time we can really believe that this will be the house where we will live.

steel frame

for the best effect, use photosynth on your iphone or iPad to view these images three-dimensionally

this photo was taken from our neighbours’ (konishi gaffney) window, as the crane was being gradually manouvered through the twists and turns of our lane: people have commented that it must have been airlifted in.

One of the most important things about designing our accessible family home, was that it should be a place that belongs to the children as much as it does to us; the best way to ensure this is to include them in the design process

Greta’s bedroom

space for my toys

Bee making sure her bedroom is her bedroom

Bee’s fimo Chambers McMillan family

Bee describing the house

Bee looking in

T looking in

Greta red-lining plans