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Photo collection: Nonclusive solutions

Design that meets variation without sorting people. Park benches, toilet signs, lifts, and counters that simply work for whoever arrives.

  • Round wooden picnic table in a sandy playground, with open gaps between the attached bench sections. A climbing frame stands behind it.
    A picnic table with gaps between the benches. A wheelchair rolls in among the seats, no special place needed.
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  • Round wooden picnic table on grass in a park, with open gaps between the bench sections. Bare trees in the background.
    A park picnic table with open gaps between the bench sections. The gaps are for anyone who arrives on wheels, with a stroller, or with a dog.
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  • Picnic table with a galvanised steel frame on a gravel square between apartment blocks. The tabletop extends beyond the benches at the near end, leaving a free open edge. Orange pergolas and planters behind.
    A picnic table on a housing square. The tabletop is longer than the benches at one end, so there is one open place with no bench in the way. The place is built into the standard table, not added beside it.
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  • Semi-circular wooden bench in a shopping mall, built from light vertical slats with integrated planters and an open front.
    A mall bench with an open front. Sit on it, roll into it, lean on it. The open shape serves many bodies without marking a place for any of them.
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  • Danish public bench named Sammenbænk, curved wooden slats on a corten steel frame. The seat dips gently toward the middle, and the name is laser-cut into the steel leg.
    Denmark. Sammenbænk, the together-bench: one sculptural seat, lowest in the middle, that invites sitting together without naming who it is for.
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  • Per-Olof Hedvall in his wheelchair in a narrow whitewashed old-town street in Marbella, wisteria overhead and potted plants along the walls. The street is paved edge to edge with smooth stones. Two people stroll further down.
    Marbella. A narrow old-town street with continuous smooth paving. The whole passage works for everyone, centuries after it was laid. No separate accessible route is needed. The street itself is the route.
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  • Covered gateway passage between red half-timbered houses on Bornholm. The floor is rough cobblestone with a smooth flat flagstone strip laid straight through the middle, continuing into the sunlit courtyard beyond. Mailboxes on the wall.
    Bornholm. Cobblestones at the sides, a smooth flagstone strip through the middle. Nobody is sorted, and the old gateway keeps its character.
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  • Curving white pedestrian ramp over a road in Alicante, carrying a steady flow of people between two levels of the seafront promenade. Palm trees, apartment buildings, and a small blue sign with a wheelchair pictogram at the ramp entrance.
    Alicante. A curving ramp over the road, carrying everyone between the two levels of the seafront promenade. The ramp is the main route, not the alternative.
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  • Shopping mall entrance at Christmas, with Julen är här on the banner. A red carpet covers the whole flat approach to a row of wide glass doors under Christmas lights.
    A shopping mall at Christmas. The red carpet spans the whole flat entrance, and every door opens onto it. The welcome and the level access are the same surface.
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  • White wall sign in English and Dutch reading Toilet with wall grip, with a small icon of the wall-mounted grip itself.
    Netherlands. The sign names the feature, not the visitor. Photo: Bitte Rydeman.
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  • Handwritten cardboard sign in French and English reading Toilet for everybody who pees standing up, with a hand-drawn star.
    A handwritten sign that sorts by what you do, not who you are. Photo: an anonymous participant in our citizen-science studies.
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  • Round white sticker with a golden crown, a small red heart, and the text Reserved for all.
    Reserved for all. The politest refusal of a category I have photographed.
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  • Atrium courtyard at Mid Sweden University. A curved granite ramp and central steps form one combined level change, a black handrail following the curve. People with coffee cups stand on the upper level. A tree and trellised greenery along the walls.
    Mid Sweden University. Steps and a curved ramp built as one piece of the courtyard, so there are several ways to manage the same difference in height. No one is sent around the back.
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  • Flexstep stair lift in a protected historic building, a flat steel platform recessed into the marble floor with folded stair treads along one edge and brass railings.
    A staircase that becomes a lift. The heritage building keeps its stairs. The visitor keeps their route.
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  • People walking down the Flexstep staircase in the heritage building, brass rails on both sides. Adults and children use the route naturally.
    The staircase-that-becomes-a-lift in use. Adults and children take the route without giving it a thought. Nothing about it says accessibility. It is simply the way in.
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  • Door control on a white wall, a black panel with glowing blue corner markers, a pictogram of the swinging door, a ring-lit push button with arrows pointing to it, and a hand icon for touchless operation.
    A door opener labelled by what it does. Push the button or wave a hand. Nobody is depicted.
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  • Black upright door opener on a wall of dark horizontal timber cladding, with a white pictogram of a door swinging open. A door frame is visible at the right edge.
    A door opener outdoors, with a pictogram of the door swinging open. The button shows what it does, so it needs no person icon. The contrast with the dark wall could be better, but the idea is right.
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  • Green kitchen door in a restaurant at Gothia Towers, Gothenburg. Two identical oval push plates sit on the door frame, one at elbow height and one down at foot height. A deep-green velvet curtain hangs beside the door.
    Gothenburg. A restaurant kitchen door with the same push plate at two heights, one for a hand and one for a foot, for whoever comes through with their hands full.
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  • Coffee station with two counter heights, each with its own full coffee machine and supplies.
    Two counter heights, two complete coffee stations. Nobody gets the lesser version.
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  • Two bathroom cubicle doors in a tiled restroom. The door markings show one wider and one narrower cubicle, without person icons.
    Two cubicles, marked by their widths, not by who may enter.
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  • Two dark green restroom doors in an institutional corridor at Gothenburg University, each with a small black square sign showing the room rather than a person.
    Gothenburg. Two identical doors. The signs show the room. One room has grab rails and the other does not, but neither door singles anyone out.
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  • Close-up of a restroom sign, a black square with a white pictogram of a toilet with a grab rail. No person depicted.
    A toilet sign that shows the toilet. Nobody has to match a picture of themselves to open the door. Photo: Stina Ericsson.
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  • Atrium of Handicaporganisationernes Hus in Taastrup, Denmark. White perforated balcony bands curve around the space, a reception desk sits in a green accent wall, and a visitor reads the wayfinding board.
    Taastrup, Denmark. A house designed from variation, and it does not announce it.
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  • A level of the atrium in Handicaporganisationernes Hus, layered white perforated balconies against deep pink accent walls, with indoor trees below.
    Inside Handicaporganisationernes Hus in Taastrup. Each floor carries its own colour, so you know where you are. Colour as wayfinding helps many visitors, and no one needs to ask.
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  • Elevator in Handicaporganisationernes Hus, Taastrup. Beside the standard call panel, two black plates with arrows sit just above the floor, low enough to press with a foot or a wheelchair footplate. A person stands beside them, demonstrating.
    The elevator in Handicaporganisationernes Hus, Taastrup. The buttons sit at two heights: one panel at hand height, and two more just above the floor, where a foot or a wheelchair footplate can press them. The low buttons are part of the house's design, not an add-on for a group.
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  • View from the top of a Flexstep installation, a staircase that can transform into a lift platform, in a heritage interior.
    The staircase-that-becomes-a-lift, seen from the top. The lift is part of the floor, and nothing marks it until it moves.
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  • Musholm holiday and sports centre in Denmark at dusk, a circular hall clad in vertical timber slats over a glazed ground floor, standing on a grass slope. Through the glass, a yellow handrail follows the curved ramp inside.
    Musholm, Denmark. Inside the round hall, a long curved ramp follows the wall. From outside you only see the gentle slopes. The accessibility is built into the architecture, not attached to it.
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  • Street market stall in Fuengirola, straw hats on rotating racks and walls of flip-flops. In front, a wooden stand where wooden walking canes stand interleaved with black trekking poles.
    Fuengirola, Spain. A market stall where walking canes stand next to trekking poles, among the hats and flip-flops. Assistive and ordinary, sold side by side.
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  • Printed sign in Swedish reading Alla gillar olika. Ta det försiktigt med starka dofter, meaning everyone likes differently, go easy on strong scents.
    A scent-consideration sign that asks without sorting anyone. Photo: Stina Ericsson.
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  • Bright red RedLocker dispenser on a white-tiled restroom wall. Tampons show behind one window with a turning knob below them, pads behind the other with a pull handle. A sticker reads RedLocker makes menstrual products available.
    IKDC, Lund. Free menstrual products, tampons behind one window and pads behind the other. The dispenser hangs in every toilet, not only in one kind of room.
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  • White-tiled restroom wall with one ochre yellow tile carrying a chrome coat hook at seated height.
    An extra coat hook on its own tile, at seated height. The yellow tile makes the care visible without a word.
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  • Wide corridor at IKDC in Lund with a tactile guidance strip along the floor. One person walks and three people in wheelchairs roll through the same space. A Reality Lab poster on the wall.
    IKDC, Lund. A wide corridor with a tactile guidance strip. One walking, three rolling, all in the same generous space. The width means nobody has to wait or give way.
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  • Bronze sculpture in a Málaga shopping street, a dove and an open hand fused into one body. The dove's breast and head rise at one end, and its tail feathers double as the hand's fingers.
    Málaga. Ave Quiromántica, a dove and an open hand cast as one body, the tail feathers doubling as fingers. Two forms share one shape without a seam, which is what the best design in this collection also does.
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What it is

This collection shows design that meets human variation without sorting people first. None of these solutions announce themselves. That is the point. When design starts from variation, it needs no marker, no special route, and no symbol saying who it is for.

The park benches are my favourite example. A round table with gaps between the seats is not an accessible table. It is a table. The gap works for a wheelchair, a stroller, a walker, or a dog on a leash, and for the people around the table it is simply a place to sit. Access does not need to become a topic.

The signs in this collection work through description: they describe the room or the function instead of the visitor. A toilet seen from above, a wall grip named in words, a door panel showing what it does. It is the shift from person to function, photographed in the wild.

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License: Open Educational Resource

This is an Open Educational Resource (OER). Everything I have created here is shared under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0).

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