DEAFSPACE
Deaf people inhabit a rich sensory world where vision and touch are a primary means of spatial awareness and orientation. Many use sign language, a visual-kinetic mode of communication and maintain a strong cultural identity built around these sensibilities and shared life experiences. Our built environment, largely constructed by and for hearing individuals, presents a variety of surprising challenges for deaf people. Recently, deaf people have responded to these designs with their own particular way of altering their surroundings to fit their unique ways-of-being. This approach is often referred to as DeafSpace.
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When deaf people congregate the group customarily works together to rearrange furnishings into a “conversation circle” to allow clear sightlines so everyone can participate in the visual conversation. Gatherings often begin with participants adjusting window shades, lighting and seating to optimize conditions for visual communication that minimize eyestrain. Deaf homeowners often cut new openings in walls, place mirrors and lights in strategic locations to extend their sensory awareness and maintain visual connection between family members.
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These practical acts of creating a DeafSpace are long-held cultural traditions that, while never before formally recognized, are the basic elements of an architectural expression unique to deaf experiences.
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DEAFSPACE DESIGN GUIDELINES
The DeafSpace Guidelines is a catalogue of more than one hundred and fifty distinct DeafSpace architectural design elements that address five major intersections between deaf experience and the built environment: space and proximity, sensory reach, mobility and proximity, light and color, and, finally, acoustics.