Towards a plurisensorial architecture: The incorporation of blind students into the workshop

Abstract

At present, the principles of lifestyles and dwelling customs are being modified, so it is essential that the different professions start adapting their profiles to this context.
My innovative experience as a professor, developed over the past four years, has been to include blind students in the workshop that 1 teach.
The integration of blind students into the teaching of first year architecture contributes to a greater sensorial development of all the students, thanks to the transfer of sensorial experiences and of phenomena of perception other than those already experienced by them, which are related to the use of all the senses during the exercise of planning and enjoying architecture.
The integration of the visually handicapped with first year architecture students is a vanguard initiative associated with concepts of the current architectural phenomenology and with concepts of social responsibility: integration, exploration of new strategies associated with the use of all the senses; it is putting oneself as a designer in the place of the other person.