Скачать или смотреть Inclusive by Nature: Sustainability and Universal Design

For World Sustainability Day on October 29, 2025 we were thrilled to host four leading Universal Design (UD) experts on building places and spaces that work for every body and the planet!

Topics include: Designing for climate resilience and inclusivity, equity and accessibility in green building standards, Universal Design’s role in sustainable urban planning, and barriers and opportunities in design and practice.

This is a recording of a live webinar hosted by Starkloff Disability Institute on October 29, 2025. ASL interpretation included in recording. Find more Universal Design and inclusion resources at https://starkloff.org/

Featuring:

Chris Downey
Architect • Architecture for the Blind
Chris Downey, AIA , has over 35 years of experience as an architect—continuing without sight since 2008. Leveraging this altered perspective as a differentiating strength, he now specializes in projects for the blind and low vision along with the broader disability community as well as cultural, transit and technology projects.

William Leddy
Founding Principal • Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects
A founding Principal of LMSA in San Francisco, William Leddy, FAIA, believes that architecture has an important role to play in leading our communities toward a just, carbon-neutral future for all. For over 30 years Leddy has been a national leader in the design of regenerative architecture that celebrates our place in the natural world. His firm has received over 175 regional, national, and international design awards and has been recognized by numerous organizations including the American Institute of Architects, the French Institute of Architects, the Norwegian Association of Architects, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Urban Land Institute. LMSA is one of only two firms in the nation to have received eleven or more AIA COTE Top Ten Green Project awards—the Institute’s highest award for ecological design excellence.

Stuart Shell
Associate Principal • BranchPattern
Stu Shell, AIA, LEED AP, RESET AP, works with an interdisciplinary team at BranchPattern to create building solutions that place people first. As an architect-turned-researcher, he focuses on what occupants need to be healthy and engaged. Stu loves sharing his knowledge of building science and believes that nature enriches our lives and is working to integrate biodiversity into the design process.

Alexa Vaughn
Landscape Designer & Accessibility Specialist • Design With Disabled People Now
Alexa Vaughn (ASLA, FAAR) is a Deaf landscape designer and accessibility specialist (DeafScape/Sasaki), and a PhD student in Architecture + Urban Design (UCLA). She seeks to bridge the gap between practice and scholarship and to address ableism, exclusion, and inaccessibility in the built environment through a lens of critical disability studies. She is an expert in design for the Deaf community (DeafSpace/DeafScape) and in facilitating engagement of the disabled community in the design process: she works to center lived experience as expertise and to design beyond minimal compliance.