New Body, New Motion by Jessica McKnight
In June of 2010, my mother, Anna-Maria Fiocco, was diagnosed with a common heart malfunction. In July of that same year, she went in for surgery to replace her heart’s mitral valve. 15 minutes after the doctors announced the surgery’s success, my mother went into a sudden cardiac arrest. Eight months later, at the age of 62, she was officially diagnosed as paraplegic after the realization that her legs were permanently paralyzed. She had to re-define what it meant to move, to travel and to live. The re-arrangement of the home and the re-construction of the space were inevitable due to traditional construction. The smallest things, like the height of the sink in inches kept her from the ability of doing her morning ritual. Most architecture isn’t designed and calculated for a body in a wheelchair, or for any other type of body than a “normal” one. Spaces are generally created for a person who is able to stand and walk. This isn’t to say that disability is ignored completely, but it is clear that “seeing disability as a stigmatized social identity and a reading of the body remains largely untaken” (Samuels). In this project, I am going to address the idea of invisible disability in the construction of social and physical space with the topics of social exclusion and architectural normalities in a need of change.