(sound 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?
♪ (upbeat 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.
♪ (upbeat 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.
♪ (upbeat 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.
♪ (calm music) ♪
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,
everybody has a front row seat to seeing.
♪ (dynamic music) ♪
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 a great deal more visual attention to your footing,
and so ramps reduce that.
So if you are communicating with somebody
while you're navigating a ramp, you can do so much more easily.
♪ (dynamic music) ♪
Within DeafSpace, we have always relied
on a heavily visible environment,
because we're not getting information auditorily.
So if you´re sitting at the top of the terrace,
you can see all the way to the bottom.
It's one distinct place
that can be unified or have three distinct areas.
♪ (dynamic music) ♪
Color and lighting are highly aligned to communication access.
Blues and greens will usually 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.
♪ (dynamic music) ♪
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 somebody is nearing them, behind them
or if somebody taps them, they look up
and that reflective space lets them know who's there.
♪ (calm music) ♪
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.
♪ (calm music) ♪
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?
♪ (upbeat music) ♪
DeafSpace, I believe,
is born of the idea that we have something to offer the world.
That being deaf confers
some very interesting perspectives on life.
♪ (upbeat music) ♪