Critical Design Lab is a multi-disciplinary arts and design collaborative
centered in disability culture and crip techno-science. Our work pivots around the concept of access: access is our ethic, our creative content, and our methodology. We use digital media and social practice to craft replicable protocols that treat accessibility as research-creation, an aesthetic world-building practice, and an invitation to assemble community.
Image Description: Hand-drawn diagram with arrows, bubbles, and words. Phrases include “spatial inquiry”, “what is access?”, “whom?", “what conditions?", “how do we map it?”, “I’ve never noticed it before!”, “I notice it every day!”, “critical crowdsourcing”, “how do we teach each other to notice?”, “Let’s imagine a new world, not just reform this one”, “what do institutional policies”, and “what does it mean to access an institution”.
We define critical design as disability culture’s challenges to existing social and built environments. We approach this work with joy, relationality, and a commitment to embodied design processes. We embrace interdependence as a political technology and design methodology.
Our work is rooted in Disability Justice. We reject anti-Black, settler colonial, and white supremist forms of accessibility with Anti-Racist Critical Design. We use technologies of remote and collective participation to enable accessible world-building across time-zones, disciplinary boundaries, and access needs. We center sustainability and community as the basis of our work.