[Nfbc-info] Article about blind archetect in today's LA Times

Tue Jan 12 20:46:17 UTC 2010

Brian,

Yes, it's the new campus, essentially, for both 
blind andother disabled vets in Palo Alto.  Will be a showpiece for sure.

How was the history conference?

b

At 12:09 PM 1/12/2010, you wrote:
>Thanks Bryan.
>
>What is this "Polytrauma & Blind Rehabilitation Center" mentioned in the
>article? Is this associated with the VA down there?
>
>  Brian M
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: nfbc-info-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfbc-info-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
>Behalf Of Bryan Bashin
>Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 2010 1:21 PM
>To: NFBC Info at NFBNet
>Subject: [Nfbc-info] Article about blind archetect in today's LA Times
>
>
> >Hi folks,
>
>
>Thought many of you might appreciate a piece in today's Los Angeles Times
>about Chris Downey, the archetect who, among other things, participated in
>last summer's Youth Slam.
>
>
>Enjoy,
>
>Bryan Bashin
>
> >COLUMN ONE
> >
> >
> >Blind architects have a real feel for the site lines
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >Unable to see their designs or those produced by others, blind
> >architects get more in touch with their other senses. As one says:
> >'There is this great palette of textures.'
> >
> >
> >
> >Christopher Downey of Piedmont, Calif., who lost his sight to a brain
> >tumor, navigates his office in San Francisco. He was an architect
> >before going blind, and he remains one today. He's now working on the
> >sprawling Polytrauma & Blind Rehabilitation Center, scheduled to open
> >in three or four years in Palo Alto. (Robert Durell / For The Times /
> >January 11, 2010)
> >    * Related
> >    *
> >
> ><http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-blind- 
> architect12-pictures,0,5>804399.photogallery>Architect 
> loses his sight, but not his will to
> >design By Maria L. La Ganga
> >
> >January 12, 2010
> >    *
> >
> ><http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-blind- 
> architect12-2010jan12,0,>6270922,email.story>E-mail
> >
> >    *
> > 
> <http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-blind-architect12-2010jan12,0> 
> ,5938678,print.story>Print
> >
> >    * Share
> >    * Text Size
> >
> >Reporting from San Francisco - The architects met on a damp October
> >Saturday and set off to visit a modern New York landmark, the American
> >Folk Art Museum.
> >
> >The building is clad in lustrous bronze panels that shift in color as
> >they catch the sun's slow trek across the sky. Inside, a skylight
> >shoots brilliant beams into a grand interior space.
> >
> >But the two men hadn't traveled to Midtown Manhattan to look at the
> >structure's famous features.
> >
> >Instead, they slid their curious fingers along the pocked surface of
> >the alloyed bronze facade.
> >Inside, their hands explored a smooth, round railing of warm cherry
> >wood, a counterpoint to the chilly glass panels of the main staircase.
> >Their canes clicked along the intricate floor, sensing the shift from
> >swaths of concrete to planks of Ruby Lake fir.
> >
> >"We were exploring how we could sense it with a cane, sense it with our
> >fingers, sense it with our feet," said Northern California architect
> >Christopher Downey. "There is this great palette of textures. . . . All
> >of a sudden, it starts to engage your brain in a different way."
> >
> >Downey said he and Lisbon's Carlos Mourão Pereira joke that their
> >meeting three months ago was the "first-ever International Blind
> >Architects Conference."
> >
> >But the questions that engage the men are deeply
> >serious: What makes a building beautiful if you can't see it, and how
> >can you create beautiful structures if you're blind?
> >
> >For the last 22 months -- since Downey lost his vision after surgery to
> >remove a brain tumor -- the 47-year-old has searched for answers to
> >both queries, along with many others.
> >
> >In spring 2007, Downey was coaching his son's Little League team when
> >he began to have trouble following the ball. By that December, he could
> >no longer play catch on his quiet, leafy street in suburban Piedmont.
> >
> >"Even with just a simple, soft toss," Downey said, "I was just guessing
> >at where the ball was."
> >
> >That year's end was a busy time. Downey was leaving the firm he and a
> >partner had opened four years earlier for a job as managing principal
> >at Michelle Kaufmann Designs in Oakland, which specialized in green,
> >modular houses.
> >
> >A neighborhood optometrist could find nothing wrong with his eyes and
> >referred him to a specialist. Downey visited ophthalmologists and nerve
> >specialists. He had eye exams, was prescribed eye drops and eventually
> >had an MRI.
> >
> >Then, in February, Downey was called in for more tests. As he waited
> >for results, he noticed "a lot of somber-looking doctor types" looking
> >at his medical charts.
> >
> >He was told that a slow-growing brain tumor was pushing on his optic
>nerves.
> >
> >"I was given the names of surgeons and advised to see them as soon as
> >possible," Downey said.
> >
> >Surgery -- all 9 1/2 hours of it -- took place March 17, 2008, a Monday
> >morning. The benign growth was deep inside his brain, close to the
> >pituitary gland.
> >
> >"The best tumor," he said, "in the worst spot."
> >
> >The next day, Downey's vision was blurry, as predicted, and he couldn't
> >discern his wife Rosa's brown eyes or her dark, curly hair. But he
> >could make out colors and shapes.
> >
> >A day later, though, the world appeared cut in half, as if a line had
> >been drawn across his field of vision. Above the line was the same
> >blurry, post-surgical vista. Below, darkness.
> >
> >Downey was whisked back into intensive care for five days of tests and
> >frantic experimental procedures. When he woke up on March 26, the world
> >had gone black.
> >
> >"That was a tough day, realizing that
> >[blindness] is the new deal," he said. "I've always been the outdoors
> >type, loved sunlight, would run around and open up all the curtains in
> >the house and let the sun in. . . . So first, oh, my gosh, no more sun.
> >That's just . . ."
> >
> >His voice trailed off. He paused. "It's hard for me to get through a
> >day like that."
> >
> >By February 2009, Downey had been blind for nearly a year and had spent
> >more than half of that time trying to find someone like himself,
> >anywhere in the world.
> >
> >He met blind software engineers, writers and professionals who teach
> >computer skills to others who have lost their sight. He read about Los
> >Angeles-based Eric Brun-Sanglard, the self-proclaimed Blind Designer,
> >whose specialty is home design.
> >
> >Downey learned to use software that reads text on his computer screen
> >aloud. He got a cellphone that reads him his e-mails and uses GPS to
> >give audible walking instructions.
> >
> >He began drawing with Wikki Stix, strands of wax-covered yarn that
> >adhere to paper with just a little pressure. His most useful tool
> >became a large-format embossing printer, which turns blueprints into
> >raised line drawings that he can read with his fingertips.
> >
> >Downey returned to his new job on a limited basis just a month after
> >brain surgery, but he struggled to balance work and rehabilitation. At
> >the same time, the economy was collapsing. He was laid off, and the
> >firm eventually closed.
> >
> >So it seemed more important than ever for Downey to talk to someone who
> >had mastered what he calls the "heroically visual" field of
> >architecture without the most basic tool of all: eyesight.
> >
> >Last Feb. 23, he hit the send button on an e-mail that was equal parts
> >proud and plaintive, hopeful and hesitant.
> >
> >"Dear Mr. Carlos Mourao Pereira," he wrote to this stranger in
> >Portugal, describing him as "amazingly" the only blind architect "that
> >I had been able to locate since I started searching last August."
> >
> >"Leaving the profession has never crossed my mind," Downey wrote, "but
> >I must admit that it is requiring a lot of effort, training and
> >research to try to figure out how to approach what is inevitably
> >thought of and practiced as a very visual profession."
> >
> >Pereira quickly wrote back, "It is a surprise to discuss experiences
> >with another blind architect."
> >
> >Pereira told about losing his sight three years earlier. About how he
> >uses clay, Legos and lots of hand signals to get his point across.
> >About how he had just been commissioned to design a town hall.
> >
> >"A blind architect is specially sensitive to tactile, acoustic and
> >smelling details of the Architecture," Pereira wrote. ". . . The
> >important thing is not stop working."
> >
> >Downey told Pereira that "most everybody I talk with assumes that I
> >would now have to be on the fringes of the profession." He'd spent 20
> >years, he wrote, working on private homes and public aquariums,
> >libraries, wineries, retail projects.
> >And he did not want to leave that behind.
> >
> >Downey marveled at how Pereira described his own work "as being so much
> >more about the senses"
> >but said he was "perhaps a bit doubly
> >disadvantaged, as I lost all sense of smell in my surgery."
> >
> >"That brings me down to touch, sound and taste.
> >Personally I think I'll avoid tasting buildings for now," Downey wrote
> >wryly. "There still is plenty to work with."
> >
> >In late summer, Downey sat at a long conference table at the Western
> >Blind Rehabilitation Center in Palo Alto, two seats from Millicent
> >Williams, who supervises the men and women who teach newly blind
> >veterans how to perform basic tasks again.
> >
> >The Department of Veterans Affairs facility is scheduled to be replaced
> >in three or four years by the sprawling new Polytrauma & Blind
> >Rehabilitation Center.
> >
> >Downey slid a heavy white piece of paper down the table toward Williams
> >-- the floor plan, embossed in thick raised lines, of the proposed
> >center's teaching kitchens.
> >
> >Like her students, Williams is blind. Although her input in designing
> >the facility has been key, she has struggled through endless meetings
> >to understand its intricacies. Sometimes people would try to talk her
> >through the floor plans.
> >Other times, a colleague might take her finger and run it along a
> >standard blueprint.
> >
> >But as Williams touched the 3D diagram, created in Downey's living room
> >on his embossing printer, she was able to envision the seating areas
> >and countertops, the appliances and the doorways.
> >
> >"Oh, this is what we've been talking about," she said. "Now this makes
>sense."
> >
> >No one at either of the architecture firms designing the facility had
> >worked on buildings for the blind. Understanding how people would
> >experience a structure they could not see had proved elusive.
> >
> >The architects held focus groups with VA staff and patients. They
> >thought about wearing blindfolds to get a sense of what life was like
> >without vision but nixed the idea.
> >
> >So when partners at SmithGroup and The Design Partnership met Downey,
> >they were intrigued enough to hire him as a consultant.
> >
> >"The question we ask ourselves is, how can architecture help people
> >lead a better life?"
> >said John Boerger, a partner in The Design Partnership. "That was a
> >real stumbling block we were having" with the Palo Alto center.
> >
> >Downey collaborated on a room-numbering system to help blind students
> >navigate the building.
> >The facility will use different textured flooring in a few key areas so
> >students can tell where they are by the tap of a cane.
> >
> >Blind students who descend a staircase that deposits them in the middle
> >of a vast lobby will be able to find their way because the ceiling will
> >be enhanced, at Downey's suggestion, to create an acoustic corridor to
> >the door.
> >
> >Over the last 10 months, the building's design has been transformed in
> >subtle ways. So has Downey.
> >
> >His first thought after losing his vision was about "the life lesson
> >for my son: taking it seriously and dealing. I don't have any control
> >over what happened, but I do have a lot of control over where we go from
>here."
> >
> >Beyond that, all he really wanted was to be an architect -- still.
> >
> >"It hadn't occurred to me to focus on centers or buildings for the
> >blind," he said. "But with this project, all of a sudden it became
> >clear where my real value is."
> >
> ><mailto:maria.laganga at latimes.com>maria.laganga at latimes.com
> >
> >Copyright © 2010, <http://www.latimes.com/>The Los Angeles Times
> >
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