[Sci-tech-public] Reminder: STS Circle, November 21st - Wanda Katja Liebermann - (Please RSVP)

[Lee Vinsel]

*STS Circle at Harvard*
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*
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*Wanda Katja Liebermann*
*Graduate School of Design, Harvard*
*
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on

*Body Building: Architectural Narratives of Dis/ability*
Monday, November 21st
12:15-2:00 p.m.
124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 100, Room 106
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Lunch is provided if you RSVP.
Please RSVP to sts
<sts at hks.harvard.edu>@hks.harvard.edu<sts at hks.harvard.edu>by 5pm
Thursday, November 17th.
*
*
*Abstract:* Beginning in the early 1970’s, disability rights groups in the
United States started fighting for and winning key legislation for equal
access to (the spaces of) social and economic opportunity, leading to the
1991 enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This had enormous
impact on the environmental design professions. Twenty years on, however,
mainstream architecture has evolved no analytical or creative approaches
that extend beyond the limited terms of code compliance. Using a main case
study of my dissertation, the brand new Ed Roberts Campus in Berkeley,
California, I illustrate how different architectural practices constitute
the boundaries of the profession, the products of design, and dis/abled
bodies. By telling a tale of two “handicap” ramps—one so discredited that
it lead to the firing of the first architecture team, while the second was
immediately heralded as an architectural masterpiece—I try to show what it
takes to constitute accessible architecture as Architecture.

*Biography*: Wanda Liebermann is a doctoral candidate at the Harvard
Graduate School of Design. Her dissertation, titled “Body Building:
Architectural Narratives of Dis/ability,” explores the ways in which
meanings of disability become materialized in the built environment and how
this connects to discourses and practices of selfhood and citizenship. She
is a licensed architect in California where she practiced for fifteen
years. She received her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Architecture degrees
from the College of Environment Design at UC Berkeley, where she taught
architectural studio courses from 1996 to 2007. Her current research is
funded by a number of awards, including a 2009 HUD Doctoral Dissertation
Research Grant, a 2010-2011 John R. Meyer Fellowship at the Joint Center
for Housing at Harvard University, and a 2011 NSF Doctoral Dissertation
Research Improvement Grant. Her work in the Secondary Field of Science and
Technology Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School offers techniques and
provokes questions for analyzing architecture not typically considered
within the profession.


A complete list of STS Circle at Harvard events can be found on our website:
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/
Follow us on Facebook: STS at Harvard <http://www.facebook.com/HarvardSTS>
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