Accessibility often becomes a matter of practicality; the width of door openings, area of manoeuvre, ramps and handrails. But the theme actually has much more fundamental roots in the architectural field: it is about the senses. The field of accessibility looks for spatial interaction as sensuous compensation for an impairment, such as studs in the pavement for the blind. I see a potential for gaining an architectural knowledge from this field, which can inform a tectonic accessibility, one which explores the knowledge and creates a new level of sense-itivity in architecture, so that the boundary between architecture and accessibility is wiped out, and all of us are able to interact with the spaces at a level of inhabitation.

My master thesis evolves from this vision of re-joining the body and the space, taking its point of departure in the aged body, as this is a body stage we will all experience at some point. The project is self-defined based on this user group, an analysis of which has revealed a new tendency towards the residential solution of the co-house, in Danish terms denoted “bofællesskab”. This is a typology offering a social level of accessibility, which is further enforced in this project by connecting the individual dwelling through a common atrium, which also becomes a joint between outside and inside, making the nature accessible independantly of the season.

The site chosen for the project offers accessibility at the landscape scale; offering the qualities of prospect and refuge of a sloping site near Randers in eastern Jutland, a site with characteristic featueres formed from a glacier during the previous ice age. This has inspired to a site-specific, tectonic accessibility; a horizontal concrete surface in the dwellings, gesturing a joining between the wall and the body, being a supportive handrail element, but also a material joint between wood and concrete as well as signifying a joint between the proportions of a wheelchair body and an erect body. It meanders through space, forming surfaces for seatings as well as table surfaces, for the direct spatial interaction through the furniture scale.

Hereby it becomes the joint between tectonic accessibility on the different scales of the project, from the contextual scale to the scale of detailing.

This approached has informed the technincal forcus of the project, which has explored constructive solutions for the furnitures as well as the roof structure of the atrium, through which it has been the aim to construct not just a structure, but also a movement and a light experience by the pattern of beams and purlins. The contextual reference to the glacier has also arrived at a synthesis with the parameters of sustainability in this solution, as polycarbonate sheets are exploited to create a white, diffuse light in the atrium, while they ensure a comfortable climate throghout the year with their thermal properties.

Tectonic solutions for accessibility have thus been explored on all scales of the project, in order to advance towards a new approach of working with the senses throughout the design process.