A02: Short Post of Designer (1)

Architect: Chris Downey

As I look around the library in Knowlton, I find myself intrigued by a magazine called Form Pioneering Design - Designing for t

he Senses (with a braille blueprint of a building layout on the front). I immediately wanted to learn more about how this was possible since being blind in an architecture or interior space design profession sounded quite impossible.

I turned to page 14-15, to learn more about Chris Downey. The article is titled, Sight Unseen and it talks about how Downey lost his sight from surgery after 20 years of being an architect.

• During his rehabilitation services, he got an embossing printer. It prints embossed drawings on sixteen-inch-wide rolls, and it's basically like Braille. He then uses a PDF of the drawings that the stuff workson and takes that PDF and printsit out through the embossing printer. The line-work becomes a series of dots, so therefore, this gives Downey information through his fingertips (Kurlander 14).
• Other techniques that helps him are Wikki Stix, which are little waxed sticks children use to draw. Downey uses this directly on his embossing drawings and it's his away with interacting actively on his design (14).
• Acoustics help him understand space because he hears the echoes to tell how large a space is. Downey realized designers can think of design elements as visual, but they can also have tactile value (15).
• Downey is a design consultant to SmithGroup in association with The Design Partnership, LLP, on the VA Rehabilitation Center for the VA Health Care System on the Palo Alto, CA, campus (15).
• Downey is working on projects types that canbe difficult for blind users that associate with transit centers, airports and museums (Fogg).
• Earned a bachelor in environmental design in architecture from North Carolina State University and a masters in architecture from the University of California.
• Award Winning Projects: custom residences of Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth, MN and MIT's Rotch Architectural Library.
• Registered architect in California.
• 
  Wikki Stix (Fogg)
  

Braille (Fogg)

Sources:

Fogg, Don

2010/9/23

Architect Chris Downey finds Second Sight

http://archpaper.com/e-board_rev.asp?News_ID=4814

Kurlander, Caren

Sight Unseen (14-15)

Form Pioneering Design - Design for the Senses

Magazine