Welcome to Accessible Housing Matters!

In today's episode, I welcome Erick Mikiten

Erick Mikiten, AIA, started Mikiten Architecture in 1991 to elevate multi-family affording housing to a higher level of care and design. As a wheelchair-rider and hard-of-hearing architect, Erick has been sought after by clients around the country to bring new, creative levels of design to mixed-use, library, museum, global corporate workplace, and single- and multi-family projects, and appointed by the California Governor to the CA Building Standards Commission.

30 years later (and 30 years after the ADA took effect), seeing that the profession was still just barely meeting the ADA threshold - and rarely striving above it - Erick created another firm to advocate for radical new levels of Universal Design (UD) and inclusion, intended to demonstrate that great UD is not a compromise that has to make buildings look institutional, or that limits creativity. Instead, great UD opens new opportunities for a user-centric, comfortable design that treats everyone well. This new business - and a rallying call for the profession - is The Art of Access.

Listen to find out more about:

[00:01 - 01:32] Opening Segment

• I welcome Erick Mikiten to the Show
• • Bio
  • Erick's back on the show!

[01:33 - 22:51] Making Universal Design Sexy

• A really exciting initiative accessible design standard project
• California is lucky to have a pretty progressive building code
• The disparity between California and Oregon
• From developers, architects, and building operators: A Detailed List of Design Tools
• Everybody's a Little Different
• Strictly Multifamily Projects
• Meeting the standard codes
• Scoring with a long list of over 300 different elements
• It's national! Erick shares the process of making a nationally standardized accessibility code
• • The Inclusive Design Council
  • Different types of physical and other digital liberation
  • Accessible Design Standards: https://thekelsey.org/design/
• Promoting the Code: Erick and his team's rollout strategy
• Other groups that have created commercial building standards
• Training curriculums, orientations, and certifications

[22:52 - 24:34] Closing Segment

• See links below to know more about Erick Mikiten
• Final word

Tweetable Quote/s:

"Housing developers recognize that building code doesn't necessarily create dwelling units that are really usable by everyone equally." - Erick Mikiten

"In the standard, we're thinking about differences between people in many, many different ways. I tried to really acknowledge that, that the world is not full of mostly "normal, average" people, but that everybody's a little different." - Erick Mikiten

You can connect with Erick through [email protected] and LinkedIn. Visit the following websites https://thekelsey.org/design/ and https://www.mikitenarch.com/.

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Accessible Housing Matters is dedicated to raising awareness about important issues around accessibility and housing, and getting conversations going. I'd love to learn more about what's on your mind, and get your feedback about the show. Contact me directly at [email protected] to share your thoughts or arrange a call.