Building performance evaluations and universal design

The discipline of architecture involves many things. Architecture is both art and science, the issues faced are both aesthetic and practical, and problem-solving is rooted in both convention and innovation. Likewise, architectural design involves both “inclusive” thinking and “discriminatory” thinking - the integration of ideas and things, as well as the editing out of ideas and things. Yet the term “discrimination” takes on at least two distinct meanings - (1) a general sense: discrimination as a process of recognizing differences or distinctions between ideas or things, and (2) a negative sense: e.g. racial discrimination, gender discrimination, etc. Naming, categorizing, and organizing are forms of discrimination and are common processes in architectural design. Architects use clearly named architectural concepts, elements, and components like enfilade, parapet, and balustrade to design buildings; they work within established programmatic categories, such as “residential, " “educational, " and “industrial”; and they organize spaces and plans, for example, along corridors, around courtyards, or into gridded clusters. Designers broadly refer to these forms of discrimination as “typological thinking, " a central mode of decision-making in architectural education and practice. On the other hand, practitioners and the public tend not to think of negative forms of discrimination as an integral part of architecture. Both clients and the profession frequently conceptualize architectural works - and architects - as benevolent, humanitarian, and public-minded. In fact, a primary role of architects, among other design professions in the United States and elsewhere, is ensuring the “health, safety, and welfare” (HSW) of people. However, examples such as the famed Pruitt-Igoe housing complex - a project built in the mid-1950s in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, described as “particularly unappealing” and as a “world of troubles, " and subsequently torn down in the 1970s - demonstrate that not all architectural works fulfill the HSW mission (Rainwater 1970).