“Barrier-free” refers to a movement to improve social environments that people with disabilities experience as restrictive or inconvenient, and create a universal society where everyone can live in an efficient way. The problem lies in the fact that it continues to be based on the premise of “people with disabilities” and “the able-bodied,” and that it is designed to help people with disabilities fit into the majority society.
As an example, it is well known that on the autism spectrum there are people who demonstrate other ways of thinking and other abilities as a result of developmental processes that differ from those of the majority. The Barrier House Project focuses on the richness born of differences (disabilities) that may initially be perceived as negatives, and installs obstacles and barriers as well events in actual houses, in order to reexamine situations involving various burdens. This is a means of approaching the reality of people with disabilities, and of evaluating particular life-space alternatives as opposed to homogeneous spaces accessible to anyone. By encouraging a reexamination starting from the “obstacles and disabilities” of construction and human beings and by remodeling existing houses, we propose new forms of construction and ways of life within the everyday.