ABSTRACT
By the mid-1970s Berkeley, California, had become internationally recognized as the wellspring of the movement for independent living. Overturning social biases and conventional rehabilitative practices, the Berkeley ideal posited that people with physical disabilities could take charge of their own lives and live in the social mainstream. As an architect long interested in the relationship between people and their environments and the instrumentality of architecture in permitting individuals to "be themselves," I was invigorated and inspired by what I saw in Berkeley: Physically disabled adults, who once would have been institutionalized, were leading normal lives.
