Sophia Xiao-fan Austrins
I bring together architectural expertise, lived disability experience, and community-centered practice to help navigate accessibility with greater confidence, care, and clarity.
Credentials:
Registered Architect, OR
ICC Accessibility Inspector/Plans Examiner (AIPE)
LEED Accredited Professional
WELL Accredited Professional
MBE/WBE/ESB #16241
M. Arch, Harvard University
B.S. Arch, University of Michigan
Architectural Foundation
In over two decades of training and practicing as an Architect, I have been motivated by the power of Architecture to shape lives. Our work together brings accessibility into these conversations as a design opportunity that can strengthen the overall vision.
I meet you regardless of your project type, learning and understanding the needs of each place and population. My experience spans housing, healthcare, schools, libraries, and community centers as well as performing art, restaurant, exhibits and cultural spaces.
Designing with Communities
Through years of leading community-centered design with an architecture nonprofit, I built my passion and capacity for collaborating directly with communities to shape our own environments and futures.
Collaborations with disability advocates transform how we gather, facilitate engagement, and create opportunities for multi-sensory participation. I relish the delight that I have witnessed when we are free to create together.
As we design the built environment, we can practice being the kind of community we hope to create—one grounded in trust, relationship, lived experience, and a willingness to listen. People’s experiences of access are shaped by culture, race, age, economics, and many other aspects of who they are.
Lived Disability
Mid-career, I developed a chronic illness affecting both motor and sensory function, and began experiencing many aspects of the built environment differently myself. I am acutely aware of how architecture can enable or constrain participation, care, and creativity. The experience is humbling. It reveals gaps between what I thought I understood and what accessibility can actually mean in daily life.
It also makes clear how much more there is to learn across built environment teams, and shapes how I now approach supporting that learning in practice.
How I Practice
When we embrace disability as a source of knowledge rather than a problem to solve, new design possibilities emerge. We create places that support a broader range of sensory, cognitive, emotional, social, and cultural experiences.
Technical Underpinning
My personal investment in accessibility means that I nerd out on regulatory guidelines and am constantly building my knowledge of emerging practices. In our work together, you’ll have expertise on hand to navigate current federal, state, and local accessibility requirements, along with the knowledge to expand beyond.
Federal, state, and local accessibility guidelines:
- ICC ANSI A117.1
- International Building Code (IBC)
- Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)
- Architectural Barriers Act (ABA)
- Fair Housing Act (FHA) & FHA Safe Harbors
- State and Local Codes
- Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards (UFAS)
Design for Ease
The places people remember most are not those that merely meet requirements. They are the places that feel intuitive, welcoming, and supportive.
I work from a social model of disability, recognizing that many barriers arise not from individual bodies or minds but from environments, systems, and assumptions that fail to accommodate human variation.
For teams ready to go further, I help explore frameworks that center usability, dignity, participation, and lived experience. This work may draw from Inclusive Design, Disability Justice, DeafSpace, sensory-inclusive design, neuroaesthetics, Universal Design, and other emerging perspectives.
Design for Wellness
Living with chronic illness has given me firsthand experience of something research increasingly confirms: our surroundings shape how our bodies function each day. For many disabled people, these are not separate from accessibility—they are accessibility.
As a WELL AP, I bring a holistic perspective to creating environments that support health and invite participation.
I see accessibility and wellness as complementary ways of creating environments that reduce unnecessary demands and expand people’s capacity to participate and thrive.