slope : intercept in toronto

By sarahendren

Aug 6, 2014

Slope : Intercept montage, showing my suite of five ramps, portable and stackable, for use with wheelchairs or by skateboarders.

Next Thursday and Friday, August 14 and 15, I’ll be back in Toronto with Interaccess and the Inclusive Design Research Centre, to give a lecture and run a workshop and panel based on my ongoing project, Slope : Intercept. All of it is free and open to the public, held at 49 McCaul Street, so please come! A public lecture is from 4-5 on August 14th, and the workshop and panel runs on the 15th, from 9-12. More details at Interaccess.

The workshop and forum in particular are what I’ve been planning as the next step in the project—to make my material design become a catalyst for highly localized public discussions about built environments for leisure and access, politics and play, wheeled mobility in multiple senses. Skateboarding and wheelchair use.

 A skateboarder uses two of my ramp designs to skate across a wall in Boston.

I’m particularly excited about the workshop and panel on Friday, from 9-12 noon. We’ll be exploring a set of city blocks in central Toronto and making an alternate map of that part of the city with new eyes: thinking about deliberate, overlooked, and even accidental features of the architecture and landscape that make cities hospitable or hostile to wheeled mobile gear.

A wheelchair user utilizes my same ramp design for access at a single-step entrance in Boston.

Joining us will be Ariel Stagni, Toronto skateboarder, skating advocate, and design & programming advisor for skate spaces; Luke Anderson from the Stop Gap project, an activist wheelchair-ramp design initiative; and others from the Toronto architecture and planning professions. We’ll meet at 49 McCaul Street in Toronto at 9, and we’ll spend from 9 am - 11 am exploring the city and making a collective alternate map.

At 11, the discussion becomes a formal panel, with Ariel, Luke, and others talking about the future of Toronto and other cities: whose bodies are welcome, and how, and why?

More information about the full set of events.

A shot of members of the Stop Gap project, with a dozen bright red or yellow temporary ramps, all reading stopgap.ca.

the Stop Gap project.

Skater Ariel Stagni "ollies" over a crest at a skate park in Toronto.

Ariel Stagni in Toronto. Image credit: Tanis Toohey for the Toronto Star.