Interdependent Design for Collective Wellbeing

2/2/2026

The Principal’s Corner

The golden rule is a foundational thing for me. Seems simple, treat others as you want to be treated, right? In practice that can get harder than it should. It’s something that’s been stingingly visceral since I developed back issues in my early twenties. At the time I was in a band, young, reckless with my body and un-attentive to posture, overextension and the need for core strength, yoga, mitigating inflammation and more. It got so bad I dropped all but one class as an undergrad.

It turned out I had a herniated disc and ultimately chose surgery to fix it. Thankfully for me it helped but recovery was long and to this day I have to be careful about how I move. I had to pay closer attention to the cause, not just be thankful that the worst symptoms were gone. This experience drilled in me the need to pay attention to universal design principles at an early age. It was around that time that I really began to personalize the golden rule as, for the first time in my life, I needed to move with greater ease due to the pain of my condition.

At Tikun we always try to design with people, not just for them. One of the gifts in practicing this way is learning about situations we didn’t know about and adding access for that condition or person’s situation to a project and our toolbelt. Human-centered design only becomes truly regenerative when disability inclusion, access, and belonging are treated as core design intelligence, not “requirements” added at the end. This month we’re exploring Interdependent Design for Collective Wellbeing: the kind of universal design that makes participation feel dignified, intuitive, and real for the full range of human experience.

Life is precious in all mobilities and everyone deserves to enjoy spaces in the build or natural environment access needs to be a given.

Seeing The Bigger Picture

At the heart of this movement are two powerful principles: human-centered design and symbiosis. Human-centered design (HCD) places empathy, participation, and deep listening at the core of the creative process, ensuring that solutions are grounded in the lived experiences of real people . Symbiosis, drawn from biology and systems thinking, challenges us to see design as a relational act, one that nurtures mutual benefit, shared responsibility, and the health of the whole . When combined, these principles offer a blueprint for universal design that is not only accessible, but also dignified, empowering, and regenerative.

Human-centered design often gets reduced to comfort, convenience, or aesthetics for an assumed “average user.” The truth is there is no average user. There are bodies that move differently, sense differently, process information differently, heal differently, and carry different histories in public space. Disability isn’t an edge case. It’s part of being human across the lifespan.

When we start there, “universal design” stops being a compliance mindset and becomes a values mindset: access and dignity as the default experience. It also changes what we’re actually designing. We’re not just designing spaces. We’re designing participation. We’re designing whether someone can enter without stress, navigate without confusion, rest without feeling in the way, and belong without needing to ask permission. When everyone can show up in the same manner we all get the benefits of their presence, their personality and their perspectives. An interdependent design approach recognizes that our lives are deeply intertwined, and that true belonging and flourishing require us to design not just for individuals, but for the relationships, communities, and all the systems that bind us together.

Designing For Dignity, Not Minimums

For decades, accessibility has too often been treated as an afterthought, a box to check, a set of “minimum standards” to meet. But universal design turns this logic on its head. Developed by the Center for Universal Design, its seven principles (equitable use, flexibility, simplicity, perceptible information, tolerance for error, low physical effort, and appropriate size and space) all provide a comprehensive framework for creating environments and products that are usable by all.

Codes matter. They set a baseline, but in many cases a bare minimum for safety and equity. A baseline is not a welcome. A simple shift we try to practice:
Instead of asking, “How do we make this accessible?” ask, “How might this project unintentionally exclude, exhaust, or endanger?”

That question pulls hidden barriers into view, including ones the drawings might not reveal: sensory overload, confusing way finding, lack of places to rest and regulate, entry sequences that feel exposed or surveilled, and programming practices that assume everyone communicates, learns, or gathers the same way. Inclusive design is often less about “adding features” and more about removing friction while increasing agency.

Designing for dignity is a means of proactively considering the full spectrum of human diversity from the outset. It means engaging people with disabilities as co-designers, not just as end-users or worse recipients of charity . This participatory approach ensures that solutions are not only technically accessible, but also meaningful, empowering, and contextually relevant.

Universal Design Example:

The Thread That Binds: Symbiosis

Living systems overwhelmingly collaborate, not compete. Forests share nutrients through mycorrhizal networks. Wetlands distribute the work of cleaning water. Pollinators and plants co-evolve in mutual benefit. Life scales through relationship, reciprocity, and interdependence.

Symbiosis is a powerful peer principle for universal design because it moves us beyond “accommodating individuals” toward designing conditions where the whole can thrive. When we design for those most excluded, we tend to make spaces better for everyone: elders, parents with strollers, people recovering from injury, neighbors learning a new language, visitors who feel overstimulated, and community members who need safe, welcoming places to gather. That’s symbiosis in the built environment: design choices that multiply benefit instead of narrowing it. In nature, symbiosis describes relationships where different organisms support each other’s survival and flourishing.

https://www.workybooks.com/resources/life-science/mutualism

Symbiotic design is especially powerful in addressing complex social challenges. Systemic design projects bring together diverse stakeholders to co-create potentials that strengthen relationships, transform mental models, and enable long-term change . This approach recognizes that collective wellbeing is not a static outcome, but an ongoing process of mutual adaptation and support.

At its core, symbiotic design is about interdependence. It challenges the myth of the self-sufficient individual and instead celebrates the ways in which our lives, abilities, and aspirations are bound together. In the context of disability inclusion, this means moving beyond isolated accommodations to create systems where everyone’s success is linked, and where diversity is seen as a source of strength and innovation.

What This Looks Like in Practice at Tikun

For us, interdependent design shows up as a set of habits and commitments, not just a checklist. The uniqueness of place means a standardized checklist is obsolete from project to project, this commitment compels us to reach for a deeper standard. Therefore we:

Start early, not late
We bring inclusion into concept and schematic design, when the “experience” is still flexible, instead of waiting until documents are locked.
Center lived experience as expertise
When possible, we seek input from disabled leaders and people with lived experience, and we advocate for compensating that expertise. The goal is not token feedback; it’s co-creation.
Design for choice and multiple ways to participate
We look for “one right way” moments and try to turn them into options: more than one way to enter, sit, learn, navigate, rest, and engage.
Reduce friction and cognitive load
We prioritize clear wayfinding, plain language, predictable transitions, intuitive layouts, and simple controls. We treat legibility as care.
Treat rest as infrastructure
We plan for seating variety, recovery spaces, warm places to pause, and “in-between” zones that support different energy levels and social needs.
Design for sensory access
We pay attention to glare, echoes, crowding, smell, and visual clutter. We ask where relief lives: quiet corners, soft lighting, acoustic balance, and calm routes.
Build feedback loops
We aim to learn after move-in through post-occupancy listening, walkthroughs, and iterative upgrades. Living systems adapt. Our projects should, too.

An Invitation

This month, we’re inviting you into a different standard: not “does it meet minimum access,” but “does it support full participation with dignity?”
One practice we intend to try, and recommend you try as well, to get our bodies and senses into the topic is a 20-minute walk in our neighborhood, being attentive to the access in the environment using three lenses that we or someone else might need to design for:

Low-energy or elderly: Where do you need to rest, and is it dignified?
Sensory-sensitive: Where does stress build, and where is relief?
One-handed or mobility-limited: What becomes heavy, tight, or awkward?
If you’re a client, partner, or fellow practitioner, try one small shift on your next project: pick one design moment (entry, wayfinding, gathering, restroom access, registration, signage, seating) and ask, “How could this offer more choice with less friction?”
And if you’re up for it, share one barrier you’ve noticed in a space you care about, and one small change you think would make belonging easier. We’ll collect reflections and share patterns and strategies in a future edition.

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