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Architecture: Multisensory Design for Blind People

Posted by Yttria on Saturday, February 23, 2013 // 23:48 // 0 comments (+)

Architecture - which is part of art - as we all know is a visual art matter, it is something in which generally most-appreciated by eyesight. I guess men enjoy architecture visually more than women, since they were visual creatures. Based on this expression, it's likely that eyes are the best sense to appreciate architecture, compares to the other four senses human has. Eyesight is said to be the most crucial and important sense, that human can memorize, experience, appreciate thing with. People with fine eyesight can enjoy their daily life experiencing things everytime; how building facades look like, how iron fences got rusty, walls got moldy, or even how some parts of building become one tone down by shades. But what about people with poor eyesight? Or say, people who can not see at all?

The visually impaired and blind people, due to poor eyesight - or even no sight at all - can not enjoy things (in this case; architecture) visually. Total blind people don't have sight abilities, some of them were blind from birth that they didn't have any memory nor sighting-experience of space. Partially blind people's sight abilities were limited. We may think of it as big trouble in life or burden to them on living daily life. But the truth is despite their sight limitation, they really don't have any serious difficulty on exploring architecture spaces. As well as many other people, they adapt along very well to their current environment; doing their daily activities, socializing with friends, inside and outside buildings. This fact amazed me right when I see them exploring some kind of zigzag and irregular spaces themselves.

The disabled can adapt to any situations, but still we need to provide easy, pleasant, and safe spaces for them. Government and designers need to enrich their designs to fit the disabled's basic needs. There were already disabled standardized regulations to be applied to public designs, and fortunately had been used in some countries all around the world (one of the well-knowns is the Americans with Disabilites Act (ADA) Accessibility Guidelines for Buildings and Facilities), while some still haven't applied a standard yet. Public spaces in some countries still remain unfriendly to the disabled people.

Blind people time to time adapt to their surroundings; they access spaces by walking with stick, memorizing count of steps when walking, even making sounds when they move forward to obtain the echoes to measure the distances. Every moves unconsciously are using the remaining senses. It's true, that disabled people will tend to use senses they had, when the sense they need's lacking. That's how we found how important the remaining senses are to the disabled, and how crucial the issue to our public designs to ensure that it's proper enough to be accessed by the disabled. A concept which covers all predicted disabled issues is a multisensory approach to the whole design. The development of this multisensory design will be a huge help to the disabled - in this case the blind people - doing their activities safely and comfortably. It can be ensured that the blind people can also enjoy the so-called visual-matter architecture, only in another more exciting, interesting perspectives than we normal people do. The senses blind people basicly use will remain to function, or even developed somehow due to the maximizing usage of each senses. Designers can stimulate users - in this case blind people - to get to know the place by natural stimulants such as plantings. Plants with strong characters in taste and smell will sure be good stimulants for the blind people to oriented in a place. Plants with fruits are preferable, and also plants with strong fragrances. This might be applied to the outdoor cases with landscape-design approach. Tactile approach to the designs can also brings out another way of experiencing and accessing spaces for blind people. Unique-textured materials on exterior or interior walls, furnitures, fixtures, all architectural elements can be used to help blind people defining spaces and finding their way into spaces. Since they are mostly used to Braille when reading and using stick on hazard warnings, they will certainly find it easy to define the spaces by touching the textured-elements. All type of walls can be applied; plastered wall, exposed-bricks, rough-skinned wall, and even synthetic-materials, as long as they got unique textures.

Last but not least, is the audibility; using the hearing sense. Ear is said to be the most functional sense owned by blind people, it's the most sensitive sense for them since their visions can not be functioned. Number of different materials can be applied to surfacings, which is expected to produce different sounds as people walk on them. This way blind people can easily access, define, and memorize spaces. Landscape approach such as dynamic water feature elements can also be used. All these multisensory ways are allowed to be applied to the designs as long as they are not harmful, not confusing, and still in the corridor of standards. Experiencing spaces in these multisensory ways will helps the disabled doing their daily activities independently.

From this session, I started to learn that by the time one of the senses not functioned well as it should, all the other senses will function more dominantly. These senses will alter the job of the unfunctionate sense in another different ways. Life given by God is always fair to every soul, that everybody - even the unfortunate ones with incomplete senses - got to experience things in many different ways. This should triggers us to always be grateful. It had always been a natural tendency for every human who had desire to feel or to experience some things in life. And again, we humans have to be grateful that we got the chance to enjoy and experience life the way we wanted. Even a Pinocchio wants to become a real human being in order to experience life fully!

Labels: architecture, landscape

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Hello! My name is Yttria. Here's where I share some of my photoworks, sketches, stories and quick thoughts. Some are just doodles and mumbles. Hope you enjoy it.

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