Including the disabled community in the design process is Alexa’s driving force towards transforming the landscape architecture profession and creating a more accessible public realm.
Alexa Vaughn (ASLA, FAAR) is a Deaf landscape designer and accessibility specialist at Sasaki, and a PhD student in Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA. She is a multi-award-winning practitioner and scholar, awarded the Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture by the American Academy in Rome (2022-2023), the Eugene V. Cota Robles Fellowship by UCLA (2023-2028), and the Landscape Architecture Foundation Fellowship in Innovation and Leadership (2020-2021). She has dedicated her practice and research to educating landscape architects, professionals, and students about including the disabled community in the design process, from the beginning all the way through finished product (and even after construction!).
Alexa’s research and passion for accessible and inclusive design began as a student at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2018, she published an article in Ground Up Journal , Issue 07: DeafScape: Applying DeafSpace to Landscape, an area in which she is an expert. Her lived experience as a late-Deafened woman and as a member of the larger disabled community - being forced to adapt herself to the built environment, rather than the other way around - has directly influenced her work and has fueled her fire to create radical and inclusive change in landscape architecture and urban design. Her ultimate goal is to perpetuate an inclusive design process that calls upon the disabled community’s lived experiences and expertise, and furthermore, to help shape the creation of a more accessible and beautiful public realm - designed beyond compliance, alone - where the disabled community can flourish and experience joy.
Alexa is happy you’re here and hopes that this website, as living and growing resource, will serve as a helpful tool for you to get started on your way to create a more inclusive practice and more accessible designs. Whether you’re a disabled designer joining the Disabled Designer Network or a non-disabled ally making use of a toolkit, the disabled community needs advocates and allies now more than ever. Together, we can create a better world.
Alexa is always open to consulting or collaboration opportunities; and providing lectures, workshops, critiques or panels to your office, studio, or class. Please head over to the “Services” page to learn more about consulting services or the “Contact” page to reach out.
Image description: A photo of Alexa in her studio at the American Academy in Rome. She is a predominantly white woman with long brown hair and visible tattoos on her left arm. She wears a black jumpsuit, bright orange heeled sandals, and gold earrings. She sits half-perched on the handle of a step stool and smiles at the camera with mouth closed. Pinned up behind her are some of her projects, including votives of ears and images of public spaces in Rome sketched over in cyan blue. (Photo by Daniele Molajoli).
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I create the resources and toolkits on this website independently. Your support helps me to prioritize the work and to create more resources to help landscape architects and designers become more inclusive and accessible. Thank you!
Video description: a recording of Alexa’s Landscape Architecture Foundation Fellowship presentation, shared live on June 17, 2021.
Transcript with rich image descriptions available here, in Google Doc format: docs.google.com.