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Cutting corners

Pulling a door whilst reversing a wheel...
Cutting Corners is born out of a real-life project, designed for a person referred
to as M. M trained as an aerial-acrobatic pilot. She suffered an accident that left
her paraplegic. Since then she uses a motorised wheelchair to move around
spaces. Her apartment was designed to standards to accommodate her new
condition butleft her trapped in daily minute trajectories.

Cutting corners invites you to sit in a wheelchair and experience a series of
actions in a reconstructed fragment of M’s apartment. This participatory
installation challenges the norms and power dynamics that regulate the built
environment for dis-abled individuals. In realising the impact that architecture
holds, determining how someone like M could either live an easier or
near-to-impossible life-style, this exhibition proposal prompts visitors to think
creatively and engage through direct participation.

We should all be able to vary, modify and adapt the built environment around
us, as we lose or gain ability, as we get quicker or slower. Our bodies are in
perpetual change, not bound by fixed measurements from a standardized
metric handbook. How can architects better the ethics of design, to make
for a more adaptable environment, to empower the body that is different
and always changing?