Dignity and Design: Architecture for the Vision and Hearing Impaired

Abstract

This thesis is aiming to design better for those with hearing or sight loss. Since these are sensory disabilities they directly affect the way in which people experience architecture. With the numbers rising of people experiencing hearing loss earlier in life as well as an increasingly aged population with deteriorating eye sight, this should be a growing concern for people designing the spaces in which people inhabit. Exploring how spaces can be engaged without the use of site or sound can inform how designs can be made better for everyone. The goal of this project is not to reinvent architecture in an obvious way that alienates or repulses those who are fully abled but instead seeks to remedy the problems that blind and deaf individuals face with common designs with simple, elegant and subtle changes all brought together in a mixed use apartment building.