Worship the Lift Engineer

Abstract

This paper discusses a little-known history of the Architectural Association’s (AA) short-lived Environmental Access course in the 1990s, a course that was designed not just ‘for’ but vitally ‘constituted of’ disabled people. It reflects on the legacy and implications of the course founder—Andrew Walker, a well-known tutor at the AA who was injured in an accident and wheelchair-bound for the remainder of his life. The course, viewed through the allegory of the lift at 36 Bedford Square, is a micronarrative meditation on repair, maintenance, and inheritance—of institutional values, priorities, and the need for reparative curricula.