Identity Redefined

One in four people in New Zealand has a long term impairment (Statistics New Zealand, 2014). Impairments are not selective to race, gender, sexual orientation, age, ethnicity, region, health or partnership. They do not share a common religion, political belief or social class. Despite this, the architecture of New Zealand continues to marginalise people with impairments through a medicalised model of segregation and control that highlights the user’s medical diagnosis before their humanity. This thesis looks at how marginalisation towards people with impairments presents itself in the built world beyond the current standardised building regulations of accessibility. It develops design strategies that diverge from the current medicalised and overprotective architecture to empower people to redefine the oppressive fixed identification of disability and instead give users the freedom to define their multifaceted identities on their own terms, within their own framework.