UNIVERSAL DESIGN FRAMEWORK FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF ADAPTABLE ARCHITECTURAL STUDIOS FOR LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Issues arising from the general problem of the inaccessibility of the built environment to people with disabilities (PWDs), have led to a paradigm shift from design approaches aimed at narrow code compliance, to design ideologies aimed at producing usable facilities and environments to meet the needs of everyone, particularly PWDs. One of such approaches is Universal Design (UD), a framework for designing products, buildings, and environments to be accessible and usable by everyone. Consequently, guidelines have been developed for many products and environments, including learning environments, in line with the UD principles. However, these models are considered inadequate to fully address design requirements of architectural studios in learning environments. This study developed a design framework for developing adaptable architectural studios, in line with UD parameters and peculiar needs of students in a traditional and digital studio learning environment. The study adopted a qualitative research approach. Observation and systematic review of relevant literature were used to collect data, which were coded according to themes for easy analysis for the development of the framework. Illustrations were employed to present the findings for clarity and easy understanding. The study outcome is a useful design guide for architects, an education material for teachers and students, and a UD repository reference material for researchers to work with and build upon as we work towards making our world more accessible and usable to all.