What is visitability, why is it relevant to all of us, and how can it influence the design and development of new housing in Philadelphia? An October 22 charrette organized by the Community Design Collaborative in partnership with the Philadelphia Visitability Committee and the City of Philadelphia Office of Housing and Community Development posed these questions.
Visitability calls for several basic elements to be incorporated into the first floors of new homes that make them accessible to everyone —at least one no-step entrance, an accessible first-floor half-bath, and doorways and pathways wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair. These low-cost measures vastly increase our ability to host family and friends, remain in our homes under a wide range of circumstances, and create stronger, more inclusive communities.
Currently, the City of Philadelphia does not require new, market-rate single-family housing (including rowhouses) to be visitable. The Visitability for Urban Neighborhoods design charrette explored how visitability could be incorporated into market-rate single-family housing in Philadelphia—making visitability just another selling point for potential homebuyers who appreciate city living.
The full-day charrette brought together forty architects and “expert end-users” from the fields of aging in place, disability rights, policy, community development, and construction to envision design options for visitable housing on a hypothetical development site in East Kensington. Before sitting down to discuss, debate, sketch, and develop design schemes, the charrette’s participants got a personal perspective from keynote Eleanor Smith.
Smith, who relies on a motorized wheelchair, spoke about the experiences that led her to create the concept of visitability and found Concrete Change, visitability’s national advocacy group. Contracting polio at the age of three, she lived in a small town which “in those days, had virtually no access” for anyone who wasn’t fully mobile. Even after Smith left her hometown, life didn’t get easier. After college, the doorway to the bathroom in her first apartment was too narrow for her wheelchair get through, forcing her to crawl on the floor to gain access.
It took meeting up with a group of other disability advocates to make her realize that buildings "don't just occur, they're designed." That realization led Smith to dedicate her life to ending the artificial segregation and enforced isolation of people with mobility impairments through the more thoughtful development of the built environment. Smith observes that accessibility has improved greatly since her youth, but notes that single-family housing remains “the last frontier.”
Concrete Change, was instrumental in the first ordinance in the nation to require all new single-family homes to be visitable and has either directly or inspired the passage of 57 other state and local ordinances. Today, Smith lives in a co-housing community that was designed to be visitable and delights in small acts of community engagement that many of us take for granted, like bringing a casserole to a new mother and distributing flyers.
Following Smith’s remarks, architects split into four groups to design new, visitable single-family housing within the context of rowhouses, corner stores, and active city sidewalks and streets. While working independently, the four design teams encountered some of the same issues:
How do you capture the feel of the surrounding neighborhood in housing design without replicating the front stoop? Eleanor Smith challenged the design teams to look beyond front steps—the simplest way to fit into the context of an urban neighborhood—and find other design and material strategies.
Does the no-step entrance have to be the primary entrance? Visitability only requires that one entrance be accessible and the site afforded opportunities for side or rear no-step entrances. But several teams got into spirited discussions over whether it would be an insult to require someone with a mobility impairment to use a secondary entrance as a trade-off for a front facade more in sync with the surrounding neighborhood.
How can you ensure privacy and security with a no-step front entrance? While no-step houses must be built at ground level, Philly rowhouses are typically elevated to provide a buffer from public sidewalks and streets. Houses built at street level might work elsewhere but, as one architect archly pointed out, “Philly isn’t Holland” The design teams came up with strategies to create a transition between the public and private realm, including small setbacks, planting beds, and recessed entrances, and projecting upper-story bays.
At the end of the day, the four charrette teams presented their schemes to a panel that included Brett Altman, Allied Construction; Cecil Baker, AIA, Cecil Baker + Partners; The Honorable Jannie L. Blackwell, Philadelphia City Council; Bruce Connus, Liberty Housing Development Corporation; Alan Greenberger, City of Philadelphia; The Honorable Curtis Jones, Jr., Philadelphia City Council; Eleanor Smith, Concrete Change; Lisa Yaffe, Philadelphia Housing Finance Agency. Deborah McColloch, Director of the Philadelphia Office of Housing and Community Development, moderated the discussion.
The panel was joined by an audience of over 60 advocates for accessibility and aging in place, developers, and policymakers—many who were looking at the issue of visibility through the lens of design for the first time.
The design work from the charrette will be compiled in a report and distilled into illustrated overview for use by visitability’s advocates—which now includes the designers who took part in the charrette.
