The vision of architecture with an inclusive perspective starts from a critical premise: built spaces are not neutral. Recognizing this reality is the first step towards profound change: admitting that architectural practice and urban theory have reproduced inequalities by making certain groups invisible, normalizing social roles, and creating spatial distributions that favor some over others.
However, moving beyond this premise involves two key elements: on the one hand, an intersectional reading (gender, class, race, age, abilities) of space; and on the other, a transformative design practice that translates this reading into concrete architectural, urban, and social decisions. Below are three major dimensions — social, professional, and design-focused — that allow for a broader understanding of this perspective.
1. Social Perspective: Space, Gender, and Experience
1.1 Use of Space and Safety
One of the most recurring topics when discussing inequality in urban design is safety. Poor lighting, lack of visibility, narrow sidewalks, or the absence of rest areas especially affect women, the elderly, or people with reduced mobility.
Traditional urban planning tends to prioritize vehicular traffic and productive functions, neglecting the daily experience of those who walk, care for others, or remain in public spaces. Contemporary architecture aims to reverse this situation by prioritizing well-being, visibility, and coexistence.
1.2 Intersection of Gender, Class, Age, and Abilities
The gender perspective cannot be limited to the abstract category of “woman.” Not all women experience the same conditions or have the same needs. A working mother, an elderly woman, a young student, or a person with a disability experience the city in different ways.
Therefore, architecture must incorporate an intersectional perspective, considering how gender inequalities intersect with social class, race, age, or abilities. Designing for diversity means designing for real life.
2. Professional Perspective: Architectural Practice and Its Inequalities
2.1 Gaps in the Architectural Profession
Beyond the spaces that are built, it is also important to analyze who designs them and under what conditions. The architectural profession continues to be marked by inequality: wage gaps, lack of work-life balance, or discrimination in academic and professional environments.
Equity in professional practice is essential for the gender perspective to permeate design and urban planning. If women and diverse individuals are not represented in decision-making teams, it is difficult for their experiences to be reflected in the final outcome of projects.
2.2 Teaching, Training, and Architectural Culture
Incorporating an equitable perspective in architectural education is a key tool for change. It is not just about including more women in classrooms or studying the work of historical women architects, but about revising content and methodologies from an inclusive viewpoint.
This involves questioning design models centered on productive efficiency or formalist aesthetics, and paving the way for a more human understanding of space: one that promotes care, participation, sustainability, and collective well-being.
3. Design Perspective: From Theory to Project
3.1 Design Principles with an Equitable Perspective
Architectural and urban interventions that incorporate this vision often share certain fundamental principles:
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Universal accessibility: designing spaces that can be used by all people, regardless of their age or physical condition.
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Safe mobility: prioritizing pedestrians, improving lighting, and ensuring well-connected and visible routes.
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Multifunctional and flexible spaces: housing and buildings that adapt to different family models, lifestyles, and social changes.
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Active citizen participation: including women, the elderly, young people, and diverse groups in decision-making about the urban environment.
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Infrastructure for care: integrating rest areas, green spaces, daycare centers, support facilities, and spaces for coexistence.
3.2 New Design Logics
Equitable architecture seeks not only to modify form or aesthetics, but the very logic of design. It proposes understanding space as a relational environment, where the interdependence of people is recognized, and the time of care is valued as much as that of productive work.
This implies rethinking traditional spatial hierarchies: breaking the rigid division between public and private, between productive and domestic, between masculine and feminine.
3.3 Housing and New Family Models
The field of housing is one of the most fertile grounds for applying an equitable perspective in architecture. Households no longer respond to a single family model or a stable pattern of roles. Designing flexible housing, with shared spaces, remote work areas, or environments adapted for the care of the elderly and dependents, is a contemporary response to this social transformation.
Furthermore, integrating common spaces in residential complexes — laundries, playrooms, green areas, community gardens, or communal kitchens — can contribute to a more equitable distribution of domestic and care work.
3.4 Public Space and Invisible Care
An essential part of architecture is recognizing the importance of care in the city. Tasks such as accompanying, waiting, caring, or educating are often carried out in public space.
Incorporating benches, shade, waiting areas, public restrooms, safe zones, and accessible routes to schools or health centers are not mere details: they are decisions that can change the way people experience the city.
4. Challenges and Future Perspectives
4.1 Multiple Experiences
It is not about designing for a single group, but about incorporating multiple experiences and promoting equal opportunities in the access, use, and management of spaces.
4.2 Intersectionality and Diversity
It must also be an approach focused on diversity. Differences in age, sexual orientation, social class, ethnic origin, or physical condition influence how space is lived and perceived. An architecture with an inclusive perspective must be, in essence, an architecture for plurality.
4.3 Evaluation and Metrics
We still lack clear tools and metrics to evaluate the extent to which a project incorporates an equitable perspective. Indicators of safety, accessibility, flexibility, perceived well-being, or citizen participation could help measure the real impact of inclusive urban policies.
4.4 Sustainability and Care
The inclusive perspective is also related to sustainability and caring for the environment. Both share a common ethic: recognizing the interdependence between people, the community, and the planet. Designing sustainable and equitable spaces means thinking about collective well-being, environmental health, and social balance.
Conclusion
Architecture with an inclusive perspective represents an ethical and technical transformation. Ethical, because it questions who participates in the creation of spaces and for whom they are designed. Technical, because it requires rethinking the criteria of program, circulation, safety, flexibility, and participation from a more human and equitable viewpoint.
Designing with an inclusive perspective is, ultimately, designing for real life: so that cities are inclusive, safe, accessible, and sustainable; so that people can live, work, and care for each other equally; and so that architecture ceases to be a reflection of inequalities and becomes a tool for justice and social transformation.
Sources:
- https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/5/2565
- https://journal.walisongo.ac.id/index.php/sawwa/article/view/25288
- https://www.reddit.com/r/Feminism/comments/1ih8dky/in_what_ways_does_architecture_and_the_built/
- https://epsir.net/index.php/epsir/article/view/533
- https://www.arquifach.com/arquitectura-con-perspectiva-de-genero/
