(ound of subway announcements)
(narrator) We live in a world built for people who hear.
(woman) "Hello? Can you hear me?"
(sounds of many different day-to-day activities)
(narrator) But what would our man-made world look like and feel like
if it were designed for those who don´t hear?
♪ (percussive music) ♪
Gallaudet University in Washington DC
is a school for the deaf and hard-of-hearing.
And they are redesigning entire buildings
based on the sensory experience of those who don´t hear.
♪ (percussive music) ♪
We've only just begun to challenge ourselves
to examine how we could design entire buildings,
entire campuses, or even cities,
to be aligned with DeafSpace.
♪ (percussive music) ♪
Deaf people, as a culture, have been marginalized largely.
We've been, as a marginalized community, developing our own culture
and that defines what kind of place we call home,
how we claim and occupy space.
And so we've begun to ask ourselves these questions
and because of that, have gotten a lot more creative
begun to think bigger
about how we can find different ways
to align our ways of being to our environments.
The classrooms are oriented in a semi-circle or U-shape
so that classmates can continually visually connect with other classmates.
So if you want to be involved in a discussion,
everyone has a front row seat to seeing.
In a wider hallway, two people can walk in parallel, signing with each other.
But we do have specific distance parameters
wherein we can observe the whole body and its signing.
Hearing people, though, could disregard that kind of a distance requirement,
they can be next to each other, speaking to each other,
without that need for the visual field."
Stairs also require more visual attention to your footing,
and so ramps reduce that.
So if you are talking to someone while navigating
while navigating a ramp, you can do it easly.
Within DeafSpace, we have always relied on a heavily visible environment,
because we are not getting information auditorily.
So if you´re in the top of a terrace,
you can see all the way to the bottom.
It's one distinct place that can be unified or have three distinct areas.
Color and lighting are highly aligned to communication access.
Blues and greens will contrast with most skin tones enough to reduce eye strain.
You may want to have more diffused lighting.
A lot of the lighting here is directional so that it can be aligned.
There are mirrors present
to allow somebody to know and have a sense of what's happening behind them.
Through the use of that reflection they can know if someone is near,
behind or if sombedody taps them.
They look up and the reflective space lets them know who is it.
Transparency of, say, doorways.
So that when a person is in an office,
they can either have a transparent doorway or passageway,
or one that is opaqued.
So that I can see lighting and shadow and movement and know somebody is at the door,
but not clearly see who's there.
Very often, people refer to "hearing loss" as an example
which negatively frames the whole approach from the outset.
But let's imagine the deaf baby who has never heard
and yet is still described as experiencing "hearing loss".
And instead we propose a different framing: that of "deaf gain".
"What is it that we gain by the experience of being or becoming deaf?"
DeafSpace, I think is born of the idea of having something to offer the world.
That being deaf confers some very interesting perspectives on life.
[Upbeat music]