On International Day of Sign Languages, DeafCity Hub offers London a different way of thinking about inclusive design. Rather than adapting a building to accommodate Deaf people, what happens when their language, culture and experience help shape the place from the beginning?
Today, 23 September, is the International Day of Sign Languages. In London, it comes just two days after the launch of a campaign for something the UK does not yet have: a permanent cultural and co-working centre created specifically around Deaf people and Deaf culture.
DeafCity Hub is being led by Amanprit Arnold, a Deaf urban planner whose starting point is strikingly simple. As she told The Guardian in its recent profile of the project, there is nowhere in London specifically designed for her. Even meeting somebody for coffee can mean working around the building, perhaps choosing an outside table because the acoustics inside make conversation difficult.
The campaign now has an opportunity to test an alternative. DeafCity Hub has secured a year-long temporary space in central London while it builds the case for a permanent home, which means the idea can be tried in practice rather than remaining a design proposition.
What does a Deaf space look like?
The thinking behind DeafCity Hub draws on DeafSpace, an approach to design that recognises sign language as visual and spatial. Some of the implications are surprisingly straightforward: people signing while walking need enough room to move alongside each other, while meetings work better when everyone has a clear view of faces and hands.
Lighting can make visual communication easier or much harder, and the arrangement of furniture can affect who is able to follow a conversation. London already has an example of these ideas in practice at the London College of Fashion’s East Bank building in Stratford, where DeafSpace thinking has influenced circulation and sightlines.
The interesting part is not whether every London building should adopt a particular set of DeafSpace features, but the process that produces them. A corridor that looks perfectly adequate on a plan may not allow two people to sign comfortably while walking, while a conventional meeting room might technically be accessible but still make communication unnecessarily difficult.
DeafCity Hub wants to begin with those experiences rather than retrofit them later. Its proposed permanent centre would provide a place where British Sign Language and Deaf culture form part of everyday life, with the building shaped around how people actually communicate and use space.
Access or belonging?
Much of the progress made on accessibility has necessarily involved adapting existing places. Step-free entrances have opened buildings to people who previously could not enter them independently, while captions and BSL interpretation have widened access to cultural events.
DeafCity Hub raises a slightly different question about what happens after the door has been opened. Arnold uses cultural venues as one example: a theatre may offer a BSL-interpreted performance, but that can still mean attending the particular show for which interpretation has been arranged rather than choosing freely from the programme.
Access has been provided, but the Deaf visitor may not have the same freedom of choice as somebody who can book any performance. A Deaf-led cultural centre begins from another assumption, because BSL is not an additional service but part of how the place works.
That idea has relevance well beyond one building. Inclusive design is now a familiar ambition for new development across London, yet access can still be discussed after important decisions about a place have already been made, leaving those affected to respond to a design rather than help shape it.
There is also a longer history behind Arnold’s proposal. As The Guardian reports, plans were developed in the 1980s for an International Deaf Cultural Centre in London, but the project was never realised. Four decades later, the question of whether Deaf Londoners should have a cultural space conceived around their own community remains unresolved.
The temporary DeafCity Hub provides an opportunity to move that conversation on. Over the next year, the project can learn how people actually use the space and what a permanent version would need, while making a practical case to potential funders and development partners.
For anyone interested in the thinking behind the project, we particularly recommend Amanprit Arnold’s recent conversation with Andrew Teacher on PropCast: Disability Urbanism on pioneering accessible design. Their discussion explores how familiar parts of London work for disabled people and why Arnold is cautious about the word “accessible” itself.
It is also a useful companion to our own Talk About London podcast, where we regularly explore how decisions about the physical city affect the experience of living here. DeafCity Hub now has a year to show what a permanent centre might become, and we will be following its progress to see what it can teach London about the difference between being accommodated in somebody else’s space and having a place that starts with you.
