On October 7, 2022, Ignacio G. Galán, assistant professor of architecture at Barnard, published a peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Architectural Education. The work, titled “Disabled Practices for the Architectures of the Countercollapse” discusses the designed nature of ableism and the unfair treatment of disabled populations in architectural structures. Professor Galán argues that the field must do more to accommodate disability, which includes creating new architectural practices and paradigms.
Countercollapse architectures are examined in the essay as a challenge to the spatial and political austerity regimes that destroy the support networks that sustain life. These structures strengthen dependency as the foundation of global cohabitation by making aid both useful and visible. Architects should not be legitimized as the only ones who can heal the wounded body or fix the damaged planet. The architectures of the countercollapse ultimately frame architecture as a crippled practice, one that may reform the classroom by examining its entanglements in a fractured world.