Disability activist drawing on her experience as a blind woman to advocate for inclusive design
Part 2 architecture student, RCA. Part 1: 2023, Part 2: 2026
‘As far as I am aware there aren’t any blind architects in the UK. I want to show that it can be done,’ says Poppy Levison, a Part 2 architecture student and disability activist.
She has already achieved a great deal. She is a fundraiser and course lead for The DisOrdinary Architecture Project’s Architecture Beyond, a foundation course taught entirely by blind and visually impaired people, which she herself attended as a student back in 2019. She was on the team behind Disordinary and Re-Fabricate’s Seats at the Table installation and events programme at the London Festival of Architecture (LFA) 2023, and was part of the LFA curation panel for 2024. She is also a young trustee for The Architecture Foundation.
During her two years as an architectural assistant at DSDHA, she co-authored its Retrofitting Cultural Infrastructure report and taught alongside practice co-founder Deborah Saunt at the London School of Architecture, where she is teaching again this year.
‘Poppy demonstrated talent and insight in guiding postgraduate students as they addressed the hugely sensitive topic of how to recast policing in the city,’ said Saunt, who was also Levison’s referee.
During her Part 2, Levison is hoping to further her research into gendered violence against disabled women and the role of architecture within that. She points out that disabled women are statistically twice as likely to be assaulted. Vulnerability is increased by the frequent positioning of difficult, unsupervised routes that disabled people often have to navigate in buildings and on public transport.
She is also keen to address the lack of attention given to access design at architecture school, and to help change a tendency for architects to treat access as a ‘box-ticking’ issue.
‘When access is taught in architectural education, it’s very much taught as a building regulation,’ she says. ‘That perpetuates the view that it’s a problem to be solved.’
She is also interested in what can be learned from how visually-impaired and blind people experience space, and how consideration of this might expand concepts of beauty. ‘I am excited for what architecture could be if it embraced disability,’ she says.
What piece of architecture or placemaking do you most admire and why?
The Wellcome Collection, London, is one of a handful of spaces that take a progressive attitude towards accessibility. I particularly admire the toilets because they are gender neutral, have a combination of accessibility options, including ambulatory, accessible and changing places toilets, clearly labelled with sinks of varying heights. It considers as many needs as possible.
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