More Than Meets the Eye

Architecture is communicated and presented primarily through visual modes of representation. The media we use to discuss and communicate plays a key role in how we view our work, influencing our perception and decision making. Further, the increasing popularity of social media as a platform for sharing architecture exacerbates this perceptual bias prioritising aesthetics and creating architecture designed for instant persuasion.

This project creates a multi-sensory architecture by understanding a vision-impaired person's perception of space.

This project highlights the visual bias of the profession while also being limited to digital and visual modes of representation. Therefore the potential of architectural drawings to influence our perception will be explored, a graphic and mapping language that can evoke the senses through synesthesia will be developed. The expressive and synesthetic nature of the drawings, maps, interprets and generates an architectural response that is multi-sensory in its spatial planning and formgiving.

Inclusive environments can be created through this approach, providing a range of sensory cues for people with varying sensory capabilities to navigate and revel in the architecture. Accessibility and inclusiveness will become a creative process rather than a regulatory requirement.