The plan shown here is of the vast West Derby Lunatic Asylum from 1846 is one of a full set of design development drawings in the British Architectural Library, an immense resource which is free to explore and consists of drawings, books, journals, documents and photographs which the RIBA has been collecting since 1835 just after it was founded. Although so few books exist on the subject, there are literally thousands of items relating to architecture and disability in the collection if you use the online keyword search on the RIBA's site and begin to look.

This preliminary drawing of the ground floor of West Derby Lunatic Asylum from 1846 shows how the order and symmetry of the plan was used to order and rationalise groups of people classed then as ‘lunatics’. The labels on the plan show categories such as ‘noisy’ and ‘refractory’ that were used to sort residents and inform the design of the spaces they were to inhabit, and the high walls of the ‘airing grounds’ which shut them in and separate them from each other. Not only is this plan typical of the many asylums of its kind designed and built at the time and as such reveals the ways in which society tried to control individuals it deemed not ‘normal’ and architecture’s role in this work. It is also one of a very full set of drawings by Harvey Lonsdale Elmes which show the development of his design from scheme A to C in response to the comments of his clients, and shows us how the architect had to modify his designs and gradually omit more and more of his innovative ideas.

This image, for example, shows a proposed exercise hall for the inmates, which was lost in later versions of the scheme -probably because of cost cuts, a changed brief, or disagreements over what facilities should be available to the asylum's occupants. To what extent are architect’s designs the result of social forces and not their own approaches and ideas? Does architecture still segregate and incarcerate? What categories are in use today?

The variety of materials in the collection is extraordinary. For example, in the Parliamentary Report of the Committee on Madhouses, 1815 you can read inspectors’ firsthand accounts of the appalling conditions in lunatic asylums which brought about changes in the law and ‘improved’ buildings such as West Derby.

You can look at a sample of ‘Paripan’, a render specially developed for use in asylums and hospitals and see the colours which were used.

You can find original briefs for architectural competitions for asylums and for new building types such as the Colony – which separated asylums into ‘villages’ of small buildings, giving a more human scale but enforcing categorisation and segregation even further.

PROPOSED Colony for Epileptics, Imbeciles. and Idiots,To be Erected at LANGHO, near BLACKBURN. CONDITIONS OF COMPETITION AND INSTRUCTIONS TO ARCHITECTS AS TO COMPETITIVE DRAWINGS. 6TH DECEMBER, 1901.

Conditions and Instructions to Competing Architects.

1. Competitors will do well, in considering their proposals, to have regard to strict economy throughout, both as regards original construction and fittings, as well as subsequent administration and supervision, and to avoid everything in the way of extravagance. At the same time they are expected to provide in their drawings all that is necessary for efficiency and for sound and substantial construction, and the avoidance of future works of repair and early renewal. The designs for the Homes forming the Colony should be that of homely domestic buildings, varied somewhat so as to avoid monotony and to promote cheerfulness.

2. The buildings should be so designed as to afford facilities for extension in respect of every class. They will have to afford accommodation at the outset for some 700 patients, namely :- 370{Idiots and} In homes of about 50 or 60 (semi-detached if Imbeciles desired) a large proportion being bed ridden. 100 Adult Epileptics classed as insane. 30 Epileptic Children classed as insane. 150 Sane Epileptic Adults{The sane patients may advantageously be 50 Sane Epileptic Children grouped apart from the insane patients TOTAL 700 Exclusive of Sick and Probationers

3. The buildings must be designed upon what is known as the “Colony” system, the patients being housed in a number of Homes – some detached and some semi-detached-scattered judiciously about the estate, and grouped after the fashion of villages, for the respective classes. These villages may be 300 or 400 yards apart, and the Homes comprising them 50 to 150 feet apart.

You can also browse more recent examples. There is a huge collection of original photographs that illustrated journal articles about new building typologies which emerged throughout the 60’s and 70’s when disabled people and their families began to demand access to education and independent living. In the journals, you can track the activism and events which led to Part M and read heated articles by Louis Hellman and Selwyn Goldsmith, and make up your own mind about buildings like Edward Cullinan’s MacIntyre Home in Milton Keynes - both in the way it 'frames' people with learning disabilities, and in what is seen as an appropriate aesthetic. You can also find some inspiring buildings, designed by and with disabled people, and by some very well known architects: such as OMA’s inventive house for a wheelchair user, Tony Fretton’s restrained Faith House at Holton Lee for disabled artists or UN Studio’s dynamic urban design ‘SWOZ 1’ for an intramural centre for adults with learning difficulties in Sloten, near Amsterdam.

Because architectural history and journalism tends to emphaise well known architects and canonical buildings, and because disability tends to have very low visibility in our society you can expect that many of the materials you unearth, such as the set of West Derby plans, will almost never have been looked at before. You will also find that some areas (such as the design of lunatic asylums in the 19th C) are very well represented in the collection and others (such as the design of ‘colonies’ in the early 20th C) appear to be more or less absent. Why do some building types feature in the press and in the collection and not others? Why is disability sometimes considered an issue for architectural debate and not at other times? What projects do architects choose to donate to the collection and publish in books, and what materials does the British Architectural Library (BAL) strive to collect?

Shown here are two rare images from the BAL showing people using two very different buildings which have accommodated people with disabilities in the past. In the first we see an inmate of Ipswich Workhouse in the late 19th C kneeling subserviently either at prayer or about to receive a meal. In the second we see an active image of disabled boys building their own dormitories at the Chailey Heritage Craft School in the 1930s.

The man kneeling at the dining room platform of Ipswich workhouse could have been brought into poverty through a variety of circumstances but we do know that the inmates of workhouses included the mentally ill and ‘feeble bodied’ and ‘infirm’ until late in the 19th century. No accounts of the experiences of residents of any institutions have been found in the BAL collection and this evocative sketch is a very rare example of their inclusion in a drawing.

The photograph shown here is of ‘crippled’ boys building their own dormitories at the Chailey Heritage Craft School in the 1930’s is from a fundraising leaflet for new buildings designed by Ninian Comper. The language it uses may seem patronising and melodramatic and reminds us of the extent to which attitudes and terminology change. In the photographs of the finished buildings that later appeared in The Builder, however, there are no pictures of the boys. The article concentrates on the form and style of the building and makes no mention of the school’s pupils or its principles of physical exercise, fresh air and self-reliance.

How often do we hear direct from a building’s users today or include them in our design process? How do we represent them in our own photographs, drawings and descriptions? To what extent do we base our understanding of the inhabitants of our buildings on assumptions about what is ‘normal’?

Although we know that the built environment is occupied by all kinds of people there is very little representation of people with disabilities in the BAL, despite there being many schemes for schools, homes, workplaces and even churches in the collection. First, architecture tends to imagine a ‘normal’ user (and a ‘normal’ architect), usually a white able bodied male exemplified by Le Corbusier’s Modulor, who need not be represented or challenged. Second, it rarely involves users in the design process or in design criticism so we hear little of their experiences in architectural journalism and history. Third, buildings are almost always drawn and photographed uninhabited. The ways in which buildings are designed, documented and publicised further compound the traditional invisibility of disability in society, and mean that representations of disability in the BAL are almost always from the perspective of the architect or professional and almost never from a person with specific lived experience of negotiating the environment with his or her particular impairments.

In searching the collection particular efforts were made to locate materials which might represent the environment from the perspective of disabled people but almost nothing was found. For example, in the two large and well illustrated reports of his tour of French asylums made by E. W. Wonnacott almost all his photographs are empty of residents. Even the wonderful article published in Country Life about building his own house with two other injured soldiers after the first world war, Arthur Butler only includes pictures of the finished (and very ordinary) building. It is always worth asking then, who has produced this image or text, and in what circumstances? What position or role do they occupy and what beliefs or assumptions might they hold?

You will find that there are periods such as the 1830s or 1970s when new legislation related to disability requires new building types. At these times architects are suddenly inundated with designing and realising new visions, so there is a great deal of discussion within the profession, which is revealed to us today through both writing in books and periodicals and also in the buildings themselves. Yet at other times, for example, after the second world war when - despite a large number of newly disabled returning soldiers - very little material can be found in the collection.

The timeline will tell you more about the historical factors which impact the representation of disability in the BAL collection and how we need to be aware of the changing terminology of disability in order to be able to search the catalogue properly.

Around 100 keywords have been used to search the BAL catalogue. The language of disability is itself a sensitive and highly contested issue and many terms which have been used in the past are now considered offensive such as ‘imbecile’ ‘defective’ or ‘madhouse’. Others may simply be unfamiliar such as ‘spital’, ‘palsied’ or ‘certified institution’ or are terms which relate to disability only in particular historical periods such as the workhouse. Anxiety around what terms are acceptable now and reluctance to engage with older terms only adds to the invisibility of disability by limiting what language we are prepared to search for and use.

The keywords timeline has been prepared to give a sense of what terminology is in use in different historical periods and helps you to select relevant keywords when you search the catalogue. It also attempts to build up a picture of the forces and key events which have shaped the history of disability and the built environment in the UK from Roman times until today, and by mapping the number of entries you can expect to find it gives a visual representation of the intensities and gaps which have appeared in the BAL collection.

Keywords relate to materials which have been found in the BAL in use at different historical periods. The number of records relates to how many records a catalogue search under that term showed up. The terminology of the catalogue is also sensitive to historical change – so archivists may use their own contemporary terminology when cataloguing older material. The timeline has been built on historical information and quotations from the following sources: David Brandon (1989) ‘Caring in the Community: MacIntyre, Milton Keynes’ in Architects Journal 9 August 1989, pp.33-34 Henry Burdett (1891) Asylums of the World Rotha Mary Clay (1909) Mediaeval Hospitals of England Anna Dickens (1982) Architects and the Union Workhouse of the new Poor Law, unpublished thesis held in the BAL Selwyn Goldsmith (1976) Designing for the Disabled Architectural Press Selwyn Goldsmith (1997) Designing for the Disabled; the new paradigm Architectural Press Selwyn Goldsmith (2000) Universal Design: A Manual of Practical Guidance for Architects Architectural Press Rob Imrie ed. Disability and the City (1996) Paul Chapman Publishing Rob Imrie and Peter Hall (2001) Inclusive Design Spon Press Raymond Lifchez (1987) Rethinking Architecture: Design Students and Physically Disabled People University of California Press Nicholas Orme and Margaret Webster (1995) The English Hospital 1070-1570, Yale University Press John Penton (1999) The Disability Discrimination Act: Inclusion RIBA Publications Elizabeth Prescott (1992) The English Mediaeval Hospital 1050-1640 Seaby Publications Augustus Pugin (1841) Contrasts Harriet Richardson ed. (1998) English Hospitals 1660-1948 Royal Commission for the Historical Monuments of England Jenny Taylor (1991) Hospital and Asylum Architecture in England Mansell www.direct.gov.uk www.deafsign.com www.jrf.org.uk

This project offered a short opportunity to begin to explore historical resources on disability and architecture. To date, this has only involved the scratching the surface. There is much more to find out.In the meantime here is a selection of further highlights in the BAL collection:

Parliamentary Report of the Committee on Madhouses, 1815 BOOKS

Harvey Lonsdale Elmes (1846) West Derby Lunatic Asylum, DRAWINGS

Salter, Adams, Newcombe, (1869-99) Ipswich Workhouse DRAWINGS

E .W. Wonnacott (1899) Report on tour of asylums in France, DRAWINGS

RIBA Competition Brief for Epileptic Colony, Langho, Lancs.(1901) ARCHIVES

‘Paripan’ sanitaryware for asylums, trade brochure (early 20th Century) ARCHIVES

A. S. G. Butler, Redpits, Marlow in Country Life, March 1919, pp.296-7 PERIODICALS

Ninian Comper (1932) Chailey Heritage Craft School, PHOTOGRAPHS

Edward Cullinan (1989) MacIntyre Home, Milton Keynes, PHOTOGRAPHS

‘Industry fears cost of disabled access’ Architects’ Journal, Dec 1984, no 51/52, p.9 PERIODICALS

‘Disabled group says rule won't force up costs’ Building Design, Jan 11 1985, p.6 PERIODICALS

Louis Hellman, ‘Rights of Passage’ in Architects’ Journal, 16 November 1983, pp.54-5 PERIODICALS

UN Studio, Intramural Centre for Mentally Handicapped Adults in Sloten, Amsterdam, (1992/95) in Ben van Berkel (1994) Mobile Forces, Ernst + Sohn BOOKS

OMA, Maison à Bordeaux, Terrence Riley (1999) The Un-Private House, MOMA, pp.92-5 BOOKS

Selwyn Goldsmith, ‘Access all Areas’, Architects’ Journal, 15 March 2001, 42-4 PERIODICALS

Tony Fretton, Faith House, in Architecture Today, September 2002 pp.42-53 PERIODICALS