Barbara Knecht
Barbara Knecht is director of design at the Institute for Human Centered Design (formerly Adaptive Environments), a non-profit organization committed to enhancing the experiences of people of all ages and abilities through excellence in design.
Contributed 10 posts
Barbara Knecht, R.A. is Director of Design at the Institute for Human Centered Design (formerly Adaptive Environments), an international, educational nonprofit organization committed to enhancing the experiences of people of all ages and abilities through excellence in design. She is also co-director of IHP “Cities in the 21st Century,” an undergraduate travel study program, and a consultant to Westhab, Inc. an affordable housing and community development organization.
Ms. Knecht has worked for the City of New York and consulted with not for profit agencies to produce several thousand units of affordable housing. She has researched and written dozens of articles on architectural technology and urban issues. Her work in universal design and accessibility dates back thirty years and has informed all her projects with a human centered design perspective.
Ms. Knecht holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley and a Master of Architecture from Columbia University. She was awarded a Kinne Fellowship from Columbia University, a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University, and received a Graham Foundation grant. She serves on the Metropolitan Life/Enterprise Foundation Awards for Excellence in Affordable Housing, the Board of Directors of Care for the Homeless, and the Streetscape committee of the Municipal Art Society. Ms. Knecht is based in Boston and New York where she is a licensed architect and registered as a WBE.
Preservation, Planning and Process: Manhattan’s Little Syria
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Digging (in) Detroit
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Look South!
A week ago I spent some time with Enrique Peñalosa, urban strategist and provocateur. North Americans don’t often look south for innovation, but Peñalosa made remarkable changes in the public environment as Mayor of the city of Bogotá, Colombia. Nearly impeached for his actions to push cars aside in favor of people, now he is invited to provoke and inspire others. “We have Environmental Impact Statements; why don’t we have Human Impact statements,” is a sampling from last week. <br />
Designing the way to Sustainability
<p>Over the last few weeks, I have participated in two panels on Social and Environmental Sustainability. The first one was at the Ringling School of Art’s "Designing for Life" conference, the second was at BuildBoston where Adaptive Environments organized a day long symposium on Universal Design. In both cases, design took center stage. Design as a means towards change, and design as a business force. This is good news for advocates of Universal Design. </p>
Design is Social Activism
“I have always thought that design can be a form of social activism,” says Don Meeker, environmental graphic designer and co-creator of “Clearview” typeface. This small but radical quotation was buried in an article from the 8.12.07 NY Times Sunday magazine (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/magazine/12fonts-t.html" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/magazine/12fonts-t.html</a>) on the redesign of highway sign typeface. Meeker, James Montalbano, and a team of collaborators understood that it was the design of highway signage that was contributing to highway fatalities. They applied an understanding of human psychology and function to the solution of a “civic issue.” <br /><br />Radical idea. It’s called Universal Design. Or social activism.