Architecture Beyond Sight

Architecture Beyond Sight (ABS) is an ongoing 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, initially developed and run in collaboration with The Bartlett UCL.

The Development Process

ABS began with a conversation between the The Bartlett UCL and DisOrdinary Architecture 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. An initial development workshop and first stage prototype course was commissioned by Professor Alan Penn (then Dean of the Barlett Faculty of the Built Environment). The 3-day development workshop brought together Carlos Pereira (blind architect, Lisbon) alongside blind and visually impaired artists and sighted architectural educators and practitioners to explore how buildings and spaces could be designed beyond the visual. 

Two days of the workshop were spent exploring what type of course would be most valuable to blind and partially sighted people, and what it could involve. The final day was taken up by a design project, led by Paolo Zaide (Tutor, Bartlett), where each of the 5 blind or visually impaired artists/architects worked with a sighted partner to co-design a design intervention into spaces within the architecture school, based on the theme of two people working together.  Design proposals ranged from the highly conceptual to the strongly practical and detailed, using methods including relief sketches, lego constructions and wall-sized conceptual drawings to plasticine scale-models, 1:1 scale wire frame designs and performative explanations. The workshop closed with the whole group creating an agreed framework for a short course for blind and visually impaired people; including ideas around what needs to occur to make it happen in the short-term and how to work towards longer-term aims of enabling more disabled people into architectural education and practice, as well as challenging the over-emphasis on the visual within the discipline. 

You can listen to a podcast of the planning workshop here, or using the podcast player below.

2019: Year 1

In July 2019 we kicked off the first version of the course with 16 blind and partially sighted students, who came from a wide range of backgrounds, level of knowledge and experiences. 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’. This split allowed us to best understand what a complete Foundation course might be like, and discover 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 BMade workshop on developing a truly accessible facility.

Tutors included DisOrdinary Architecture’s own Zoe Partington and Mandy Redvers-Rowe alongside international guest tutors including Chris Downey (blind architect, USA) and Duncan Meerding (blind furniture maker, Tasmania). Guest workshops leaders included Rachel Gadsden (disabled artist, UK) and Lyn Cox (blind artist, UK), and David Serlin (disability studies scholar, USA.)

Watch the videos below to learn more about year one of the course:

Feedback from participants

“The last three days have been inspirational and vigorous, and I have been completely simulated to have spent this precious time with each of you. Thank you for this opportunity […] my mind is still buzzing, and it felt necessary to spend a few hours this morning [drawing in my studio] capturing some of the magic. I so hope we get a chance to continue this dialogue together.”

— Rachel Gadsden, artist

“First, [I learnt] that not only is the idea of architecture for visually impaired people feasible, actually it is needed. Everyone was enthusiastic and that makes a real difference in taking a decision to do something unorthodox. Second, there will be benefits all round from doing this – for the profession, for pedagogy, for sighted students and staff as well as for visually impaired people. The processes we will need to put in place will benefit all, and the learning to be had from doing this will be significant. Third, […] what we need to aim for is an access/foundation programme specifically aimed at blind and visually impaired people, and then to incorporate a cohort into the BSc Architecture. [The] first step would be a summer school to help us gain the experience needed to design the access programme.” — Prof Alan Penn, Former Dean of the Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London (UCL).

You can find further feedback from participants under the ‘Useful Links’ section below.