Studio 41

Sightless

Yui Uchimura and Josie White | Senses + Living Focus

This studio is available to students enrolled in ABPL90143 Studio D and ABPL90115 Studio E only.

Studio Description

Vision has historically been considered the most important of the senses. We live in a society that places great emphasis on instant visual appreciation. In response, our built environment is often designed with a bias towards sight.

But what if visual perception was to be replaced with haptic perception?

Studio Sightless is set in the year 2025. An airborne virus is causing the world’s population to slowly lose its sight. As the world learns to adjust to a new way of living, architects too must adapt their way of thinking and methodologies, to create meaningful spaces for both the sighted and visually impaired.

Studio Sightless will challenge how architecture is typically understood and designed. Using a multi-sensory design approach, the studio seeks to re-establish a design methodology where the body and all its senses are used as a medium/tool for interacting with and understanding the spaces we inhabit.

Studio Outcome

Studio Sightless will begin with short design/research explorations, which:

• Challenge the bias towards sight.
• Re-define vision as a more tactile and historically rich medium.
• Provides an understanding of a visually impaired perception of the built environment.
• Identify strategies for multi-sensory design.

The studio will then respond to the narrative through the design of a small dwelling with considerations of a public interface.

The final project will:

• Explore haptic perception of architecture through the tactility of texture, acoustics, scale, smell, (natural) light and air movement.
• Consider the importance of architectural cues used as a navigational tool.
• Integrate the sense of touch, positional awareness, balance, sound, smell and memory.
• Enhance the experiential quality for both the sighted and visually impaired.

Emphasis will be placed on hand drawings and physical models as an important design tool. All drawings produced will be considered not only for their informative value, but as emotive representations of space.

Studio Leaders

YUI UCHIMURA is a Melbourne based architect with experience across the various disciplines of architecture, graphics and fabrication in both Australia and Japan, having worked in local practices such as Six Degrees & KTA. She completed her Master of Architecture at the University of Melbourne, focusing her independent research on how architectural frameworks can facilitate dynamic, evolving spaces open to creative appropriation. Having spent the last two years in Japan studying timber fabrication and various regional crafts, her primary interest is how a dialogue between design and tangible craft processes can facilitate a more enduring architecture grounded in the local people and environments.

JOSIE WHITE has led a career with a focus on sensory design and human experience after studying a Master of Architecture at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. She practiced in the UK and Canada before basing herself in Australia and working for architects including Six Degrees. Her professional work has focused on the creation of tangible and engaging architectural spaces utilising local craftsmanship, materiality and scale. Currently practicing at Schuler Shook, Josie has specialised in architectural lighting design, continuing her interest in spatial experience.

Readings & References

• Bachelard, Gaston; ‘Poetics of Space’
• Calvino, Italo; ‘Invisible Cities’
• Ching, Francis D.K; 'Architectural Graphics'
• Holl, Steven et al, ‘Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture’
• Lupton, Ellen; 'The Senses: Design Beyond Vision'
• Merleau-Ponty, Maurice; ‘Phenomenology of Perception’
• Pallasmaa, Juhani; ‘The Eyes of the Skin’
• Pallasmaa, Juhani; ‘The Thinking Hand’
• Rasmussen, Steen Eiler; ‘Experiencing Architecture’
• Sharr, Adam; ‘Heidegger for Architects’
• Tanizaki, Jun’ichiro; ‘In Praise of Shadows’
• Zumthor, Peter; ‘Atmospheres’
• Zumthor, Peter; ‘Thinking Architecture’

Schedule Mondays 15:15-21:15 in MSD Room 244

Contact Handbook Key Dates