Latika, a non-profit working with disabled children and adults, is building its dream campus in Dehradun. Many years in the planning, our construction follows universal design principles in both letter and spirit.
We are also scrupulously following India’s National Building Code. In the process, we have discovered something surprising – the code, far from limiting what we can do, has actually inspired us to be even more creative, more inclusive and more surprising.
It makes me wonder why the code is ignored more often than it is followed. Many claim that it is too expensive for builders to comply with, but that’s like saying “I can’t afford to buy a car so I’m going to steal one.”
Who would nod sympathetically at that logic? Especially when the cost of ignoring the law is that apartment complexes collapse, hospitals go up in flames and the disabled and elderly are left to perish for lack of escape options.
Once contractors accept the law as non-negotiable, the code is straightforward. The rules are laid out in such minute detail that a junior engineer can implement them.
Indeed, building codes are, by nature, boring. Get your inch tapes out, folks. The width of a doorway, the height of a sink and the slope of a ramp: hardly the stuff of complex, iconic design. That’s what we thought too, when we first started construction 18 months ago.
The beauty of the code is that it includes everyone
What a surprise we were in for. The beauty of the code is that it includes everyone – whether disabled, elderly, small, teenaged, anxious, reckless, from a village or a city, literate or not – you name it, it’s covered.
India’s National Building Code provides a rigour not unlike Olympic sports: the astonishing flexibility and physical fireworks of a gymnast like Simone Biles, for example, emerges only from her demanding and minutely practiced adherence to the rules of the sport.
Steep yourself in that kind of mind flow long enough and something changes in the architecture of your brain. You begin to consider possibilities never before imagined, to encounter new vistas around every corner.
There are four “surprise openings” the National Building Code has given us – all while we were just putting one brick on top of another, measuring every stairway landing, ensuring worker safety and calculating the angle of repose.
Firstly, the training centre is where disabled young adults get to try out different skills before deciding on a career path post-graduation. A full-scale kitchen, laundry and computer lab were obvious “classrooms” for them to acquire practical skills. Then out of nowhere, we thought: why not a salon?
Why not have a real-life salon where trainees can learn cutting, trimming, sweeping and brushing? But why stop there? What about manicures and pedicures? Makeovers? Head massages?
And then the rigour of the National Building Code kicked in: how do we make this work for everyone? Most small children and many people with autism hate getting their hair cut. Why not train a stylist in sensory-sensitive haircutting and invite our own students to get their hair cut in our own salon?
What else can we do and for whom? Short breaks for caregivers (mini getaways that allow a parent or another relative to have some time to themselves) are crucial for mental health. Why not invite caregivers to book a “Spa Day” at our salon – get a mani-pedi, a relaxing shoulder massage or a facial? Why ever not?
A resource centre that’s actually a library
Secondly, our family resource centre is the first thing you see when you walk into our building – because families are our theory of change. Nothing works until families are involved, on board and excited. But who gets excited by a resource centre? Has there ever been anything so boring?
That’s why our resource centre is called Sangam and that’s why it’s actually a library: a place where rivers, worlds and lifetimes meet to create something larger than the sum of its parts. Families need more than information, schemes and “resources.”
They need maps, poetry, music, art, stories and a million different words to describe the ocean that is now opening before them. In her poem “Because of Libraries We Can Say These Things” Naomi Shihab Nye explains:
What this town has not given them
the book will provide; a sheep,
a wilderness of new solutions.
They will not be alone.
They will have a book to open
and open and open.
Their life starts here.
From ramps to ‘room of requirement’
The third factor is our ramp, the most ambitious and exhilarating feature of our building. This is not simply a functional way to get from one floor to the next, nor is it just a practical escape route in case the lifts don’t work. This ramp is a stand-alone work of art with a logic and a beauty all its own. It is designed such that it creates an atrium as its own centre, an indoor-outdoor space, our village piazza: a gathering place for children to play, families to congregate and artists to perform. With a stage, a potters wheel, benches and installations, it inspires creativity and community.
Our ramp’s slope is a gentle, gradual 1:20, all the way from the ground level to the second floor terrace (330 meters). It is difficult to convey how sweet a pleasure such an easy slope is to walk on. In fact, it’s too good not to share. Our centre is open from 8 AM to 6 PM. So once we move in, we’ll be inviting our elderly neighbors to use the ramp as a walking trail in the morning before the children start arriving and in the evening after we close: no potholes, no traffic, no stray dogs. Just a safe, welcoming walking trail which works for everyone.
The final “surprise opening” is our “room of requirement” makes some of our visitors laugh out loud with delight. If you’ve read the Harry Potter books, you know why, but for most people, it’s just an interesting name for a room that makes them curious to know more.
That’s good enough.
The “room of requirement” is, ostensibly, set up like a hotel guest room (bed, bureau, desk) and is the staging ground for our trainees to master the skills required for a good job in the housekeeping department of a hotel, hospital or boarding school: making the bed, folding towels, dusting furniture, vacuuming the rug, polishing the glass.
But that room will often be occupied by whoever requires it: a woman having her period who wants to lie down; a child who is ill and needs a nap; a staff member with a report due who is desperate for a desk or a parent who has to pull himself together after a tough day.
What do you need? The “room of requirement” has got your back.
Also Read: G.N. Saibaba’s 2017 Prison Letter Sheds Light on the Rights of Disabled Prisoners
The National Building Code has the power to transform the country. Because laws talk to each other. Embedded in the building code are references to laws on child protection, gender equity, workers rights, waste management and green technology. But that’s just the beginning. The discipline and structure of the NBC provides both a basis to start from and a springboard to innovations and solutions as yet undreamed of.
Safety, comfort, justice and a wide, wide platform on which to dream: in its breadth and depth, the code is a blueprint for a better world. We need only to follow it.
The writer is executive director of Latika, a non-profit working with disabled children and adults.
This essay was written with support from the Max India Foundation as part of an ongoing initiative to promote accessibility in the built world.
