Alternative Accessibility Mapping

This paper presents a research-based pedagogical project on accessibility mapping conducted across the campuses of the Royal Danish Academy. While architectural accessibility is often framed through compliance with regulatory standards such as the Danish Building Regulations, this normative approach can fail to capture the lived, embodied, and contextual dimensions of spatial experience. This project combined conventional audits with an alternative mapping method capable of revealing the qualitative and relational aspects of space. Students, through a series of exercises, challenged normative assumptions about bodies in space and discovered different ways of moving, sensing, and interacting. Conducted in collaboration between the Centre for Spatial Inclusion at the Royal Danish Academy and The DisOrdinary Architecture Project, this project strengthened students' understanding of accessibility and opened critical discussions, through which the project addresses accessibility beyond regulatory compliance, shifting toward more participatory and reflexive processes.