Architecture for the visually impaired / Future healthcare landscape in Hong Kong

First Topic:
Architecture for the visually impaired:

Visual perception is highly being relied in experiencing the world, hence also in the field of creating architecture. We are used to suppress and eliminate our other senses, reducing our experience solely to vision. We have been forgetting our other senses. However, the world of the visually impaired people is totally different from us.  The thesis hopes to criticize the current situation of architecture and investigate architecture as a sensory experience, which facilitates the visually impaired to have better living qualities by a more rounded designed environment. The current supporting system to them is questionable for them to enjoy the world to full other than only the basic need for safe way finding. In the research, how the visually impaired perceive space would be explored, existing space for them would be studied comparing to the urban space we have for normal sighted people with system according to the barrier free access regulations, aiming to have a solution that can be integrated to the urban environment, also to enrich the experience of the normal sighted people to architecture.

Reference:

Reading:

a. The eyes of the skin : architecture and the senses / Pallasmaa.

Pallasmaa, Juhani.

Chichester : Wiley, 2012.

b. Feel-good architecture-Blind people reveal how the sense of touch influences their perception of buildings

http://www.flanderstoday.eu/content/feel-good-architecture

c.Design Manual – Barrier Free Access 2008

Spatial reference:

a. Braille Institute of America in LA (1977 William L. Pereira)

b. stanley tigerman’s illinois library for the blind and physically handicapped in Chicago

c. Ebenezer School & Home for the Visually Impaired; 心光盲人院暨學校 (Hong Kong)

Second Topic:

Venice hospital by Le Corbusier in 1964

Future healthcare landscape in Hong Kong

The healthcare landscape of the world is at the edge of revolution. As the exponential growing population and the increasing risk on spreading of fatal disease under the impact of global warming, the demand of healthcare is rising desperately. There is also need for flexibility of healthcare units to respond faster to the potentially unstable situation. On the other hand, as the world promotes more about individuals’ dignity, patient centered care is being advocated instead of totalitarian staff control of the patient. The spiritual dimension of healthcare is hence weighted high.  Hong Kong is facing a huge challenge in this field, as we are in a shortage of land but having an extreme dense population.  The current hospitals are in lack of bed spaces and the supply of facilities are much saturated. We seriously need changes. In the next generation, with the limited resources, how to provide comfortable and inexpensive environment within a short period of construction time would be a question we need to solve.  This thesis would research and reflect on the current medical system, and test out the future possibilities of hospital typology, aiming to find a sustainable and flexible solution to Hong Kong.

Reading Reference:

Spacial reference:

a. le corbusier’s unrealised venice hospital, 1963

b. Transportable Trauma Center Prototypes for Global Deployment,2007 by Tulane University Rapid Response Studio and Clemson University Architecture + Health Graduate Programe