APPLICATION OF INCLUSIVE DESIGN PRINCIPLES ON INSTITUTIONAL BUILDINGS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Each human being is different. We differ from each other in terms of sizes, abilities, develop different preferences and continue to change throughout our lives. Most of our public facilities (buildings) are designed to be used only by the able people. Disabled, temporal disabled, pregnant women and old aged people find it difficult to access or use the building which is provided for everybody. The aim of inclusive design is to provide a barrier-free or universal environment that is accessible and useable by all. This paper discusses on the application of inclusive design principles on faculty buildings in Nigeria; the school of environmental complex for Federal Poly Mubi was selected and used as case study. The instrument used for collecting the data is observation with observation checklist. The result shows that the principle of universal design is not well applied on the cased building as only two (2) out of the seven (7) principles seems to be applied on the building, while the most important principles are not applied on the cased building. This makes the building not accessible to all users. A building should be accessible to all users irrespective of age, race, and gender, able or disable people. Designers should also be considering all categories of people (user) in their design as everybody have the right to access and use public facilities.