Investigating Normal: Disability Beyond Universal Design
Investigating Normal: Disability Beyond Universal Design
Thursday, October 6, 2022
What Can A Body Do: How Disability Shows Up in Design
Sara Hendren, is a humanist in tech—an artist, design researcher, writer, and professor at Olin College of Engineering. Her book What Can A Body Do? How We Meet the Built World explores the places where disability shows up in design at all scales: assistive technology, furniture, architecture, urban planning, and more. It was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by NPR and won the 2021 Science in Society Journalism book prize.
Her art and design works have been exhibited in museums worldwide and are held in the permanent collections at MoMA and the Cooper Hewitt. In 2021-22, she was Lecturer in Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a fellow in Education Policy at the New America think tank, where she was researching the future of work for adults with cognitive and developmental disabilities.