To the editors:
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I share James Krohe Jr.’s concern regarding the social responsibility of architecture [“Designing a Better World , ” August 141, so I wonder in the name of who or what is he taking such offense at our work at the Des Plaines adult day-care center. He charges that we “might have asked the residents” about their concerns. We have conducted over 60 hours of taped interviews with the older participants and the staff, whereas he interviewed neither me nor the staff nor any of the participants at the center; nor does he even seem to be aware that elements of the project have already been installed. He might have asked the director or assistant director of the center what they thought of our work, but then he might have discovered how engaging they and the participants find it. And then it would not have been so easy to set us up as straw figures (the “self-absorbed academic architects”) to knock down.
But pleasure and imagination do not seem to be attributes that Krohe wants to allow into architecture–“maintenance-free” and “common-sense” seem all that he will allow. I consider that just another form of discrimination, another form of lowering the expectations of what every person–whatever their mixture of ability and disability–deserves.
