Architecture Beyond Sight (ABS) is a long-term project that aims to challenge architecture’s tendency to prioritise the visual over other senses. By enabling blind and partially sighted people to study architecture, it investigates how design can incorporate other ways of experiencing, imagining and creating space. ABS has been designed as a foundation-level intensive study week for blind and visually impaired creatives, developed and run in collaboration with The Bartlett UCL.

Whilst it has not been possible to run a face-to-face workshop during 2020, 12 blind and visually impaired students have already been recruited, and are now waiting for it to be safe to participate. 

In 2019 we worked with 16 blind and partially sighted students for the course – running 22nd to 26th July – from a very wide range of backgrounds, knowledge and experiences. We were also very excited to have blind architect Chris Downey (from the USA) and blind furniture maker Duncan Meerding (from Tasmania) as guest tutors, supported by DisOrdinary Architecture’s own Zoe Partington and Mandy Redvers-Rowe, as well as guest workshops by disabled artists Rachel Gadsden and Lyn Cox, and disability studies scholar David Serlin.

The course was made up of four two-day modules, divided into two pathways.  Six students studied ‘Architecture in Context’ followed by ‘Design Making and Materiality’, whilst ten studied ‘Design and Communication Skills’ followed by ‘Design Project’. In this way we wanted the first iteration of the programme to help us understand what a complete Foundation course might be like, and what aspects participants found most useful, led by the knowledge and skills of blind and partially sighted people. It was also a great opportunity to work with the Bartlett workshop BMade on developing a truly accessible facility.

You can find some student feedback from participants Fae Kilburn here and Clarke Reynolds here as well as a Guardian review here. We also commissioned Anna Ulrikke Andersen to make a film of the study week.

The Development Process

This three day action workshop – running from 13 – 15th September 2018 –  developed from conversations between the Bartlett School UCL and DisOrdinary colleagues about how engaging more directly and creatively with disability can positively disrupt the visual, graphic and ‘abled’ culture of much architectural education, as well as offering the potential to open up a more diverse set of designing, making and representational approaches.

Commissioned by the Dean of the Faculty of the Built Environment, Professor Alan Penn, this workshop brought together Carlos Pereira, a blind architect based in Lisbon, with blind and visually impaired artists as well as sighted architectural educators and practitioners, to explore how buildings and spaces could be designed beyond the visual. It also made outline recommendations about how to take these ideas forward, through the design of a short course to be run in 2019 for blind and visually impaired people interested in studying architecture (and longer-term, in the creation of an Access course at the Bartlett).

Two days of the Architecture Beyond Sight (ABS) workshop were spent in small groups to explore what kind of course would be most valuable to blind and partially sighted people, and what it would involve. One day was taken up by a design project, led by Bartlett tutor Paolo Zaide, where each of the 5 blind or visually impaired artists/writer/architect worked with a sighted partner to co-design a design intervention into spaces within the Bartlett School building, to provide a shared creative space. This resulted in a wide range of creative design methods and approaches, including relief sketches and plans/sections; wall-sized conceptual drawings; scale-modelling using plasticine, card and lego; 1:1 scale wire frame and paper-based design descriptions; word pictures; and  performative explanations. Design interventions ranged from the highly conceptual to the strongly practical and detailed.

The workshop ended with the whole group putting together an agreed framework for what a short course for blind and visually impaired people should be like; framing ideas about what needs to occur next to make it happen in the short-term; and discussing how to work towards longer-term aims of enabling more disabled people into architectural education and practice, and of also challenging the over-emphasis on the visual within the discipline.

Feedback from participants

Architecture Beyond Sight (ABS) is a long-term project that aims to challenge architecture’s tendency to prioritise the visual over other senses. By enabling blind and partially sighted people to study architecture, it investigates how design can incorporate other ways of experiencing, imagining and creating space. ABS has been designed as a foundation-level intensive study week for blind and visually impaired creatives, developed and run in collaboration with The Bartlett UCL.

Whilst it has not been possible to run a face-to-face workshop during 2020, 12 blind and visually impaired students have already been recruited, and are now waiting for it to be safe to participate. 

In 2019 we worked with 16 blind and partially sighted students for the course – running 22nd to 26th July – from a very wide range of backgrounds, knowledge and experiences. We were also very excited to have blind architect Chris Downey (from the USA) and blind furniture maker Duncan Meerding (from Tasmania) as guest tutors, supported by DisOrdinary Architecture’s own Zoe Partington and Mandy Redvers-Rowe, as well as guest workshops by disabled artists Rachel Gadsden and Lyn Cox, and disability studies scholar David Serlin.

The course was made up of four two-day modules, divided into two pathways.  Six students studied ‘Architecture in Context’ followed by ‘Design Making and Materiality’, whilst ten studied ‘Design and Communication Skills’ followed by ‘Design Project’. In this way we wanted the first iteration of the programme to help us understand what a complete Foundation course might be like, and what aspects participants found most useful, led by the knowledge and skills of blind and partially sighted people. It was also a great opportunity to work with the Bartlett workshop BMade on developing a truly accessible facility.

You can find some student feedback from participants Fae Kilburn here and Clarke Reynolds here as well as a Guardian review here. We also commissioned Anna Ulrikke Andersen to make a film of the study week.

The Development Process

This three day action workshop – running from 13 – 15th September 2018 –  developed from conversations between the Bartlett School UCL and DisOrdinary colleagues about how engaging more directly and creatively with disability can positively disrupt the visual, graphic and ‘abled’ culture of much architectural education, as well as offering the potential to open up a more diverse set of designing, making and representational approaches.

Commissioned by the Dean of the Faculty of the Built Environment, Professor Alan Penn, this workshop brought together Carlos Pereira, a blind architect based in Lisbon, with blind and visually impaired artists as well as sighted architectural educators and practitioners, to explore how buildings and spaces could be designed beyond the visual. It also made outline recommendations about how to take these ideas forward, through the design of a short course to be run in 2019 for blind and visually impaired people interested in studying architecture (and longer-term, in the creation of an Access course at the Bartlett).

Two days of the Architecture Beyond Sight (ABS) workshop were spent in small groups to explore what kind of course would be most valuable to blind and partially sighted people, and what it would involve. One day was taken up by a design project, led by Bartlett tutor Paolo Zaide, where each of the 5 blind or visually impaired artists/writer/architect worked with a sighted partner to co-design a design intervention into spaces within the Bartlett School building, to provide a shared creative space. This resulted in a wide range of creative design methods and approaches, including relief sketches and plans/sections; wall-sized conceptual drawings; scale-modelling using plasticine, card and lego; 1:1 scale wire frame and paper-based design descriptions; word pictures; and  performative explanations. Design interventions ranged from the highly conceptual to the strongly practical and detailed.

The workshop ended with the whole group putting together an agreed framework for what a short course for blind and visually impaired people should be like; framing ideas about what needs to occur next to make it happen in the short-term; and discussing how to work towards longer-term aims of enabling more disabled people into architectural education and practice, and of also challenging the over-emphasis on the visual within the discipline.

Feedback from participants