Gujarat’s school for the visually impaired designed with a multisensory approach 

Eight years in the past, in 2016, Viren Joshi, president of Gujarat’s Service Association for the Blind, approached Ahmedabad-based structure apply Sealab with a distinctive challenge. This was to go to Gandhinagar’s School for the Blind and Visually Impaired Children and assist him enhance its residing situations and schooling services for college students.

Designed for youngsters from distant villages and cities in Gujarat, the school was then functioning in a two-storey constructing the place youngsters lived on the floor flooring and studied on the first flooring. When the scholar numbers elevated, the school was left overcrowded. Anand Sonecha, Principal Architect and founder, Sealab, says it was then “collectively decided to renovate the existing building and transform it entirely into the hostel block and a new academic building would be built which could accommodate 100 students. We were appointed as architects of the project in 2017 and the construction of the school was completed in 2021.”

Anand Sonecha

Playing with gentle

And thus was born a school designed to be navigated with the assist of multiple of the 5 main senses. The new educational constructing, to the west of the present one, has 10 school rooms with 5 differing kinds organized round a central courtyard. Each classroom round the central plaza has totally different options for particular makes use of — music rooms, assembly areas, workshops, and so on., and based mostly on their features, the school rooms have varied varieties, volumes, and light-weight qualities. 

Specific skylights and openings have been designed to create contrasting areas with gentle and shade.
| Photo Credit:
Dhrupad Shukla

Sonecha explains that with many college students having low imaginative and prescient, they’ll distinguish areas which have the distinction of sunshine and shadow or contrasting colors and surfaces. “Specific skylights and openings are designed to create contrasting areas with light and shade. For example, the entrance vestibule of the special classrooms is marked by a high ceiling with a skylight making a flare of light. Also, contrasting colours are used on the doors, furniture, and switchboards so that the students can easily differentiate the elements during navigation,” says the architect, including that as college students with low imaginative and prescient are delicate to direct daylight, the classroom has oblique, filtered gentle from the personal courtyards and skylights.

To financial institution on their sense of listening to, the sound of voices or folks strolling adjustments in line with the echo produced in the areas. “The design attributes different heights and widths to areas of corridors and classrooms so that children can recognise them by sound. For example, the entrance corridor has a high ceiling height (3.66m), and it gradually reduces in height (2.26m) and width, giving an identifiable sound quality to each space.”

Bringing in the inexperienced

Sealab collaborated with panorama architect Lokendra Balasaria who planted greater than 1000 shrubs, vegetation, and timber of 37 species on campus, and in addition arrange a conventional rainwater harvesting system. “The landscape has a significant role in the design,” says Sonecha, “Courtyards, located next to the classroom and connected to the corridor, have aromatic plants and trees, which help in the navigation of the building. The material and textures of the walls and floor, with smooth and rough surfaces, guide the students throughout the spaces.”

Courtyards, positioned subsequent to the classroom and linked to the hall, have fragrant vegetation and timber, which assist in the navigation of the constructing.
| Photo Credit:
Anand Sonecha

For occasion, there are 5 totally different wall plaster textures utilized in the constructing. The two longer sides of the hall have horizontal textures, whereas the shorter facet has vertical textures. “This helps students identify which sides of the corridor they are navigating. The central courtyard has a semi-circular texture, whereas the external surface of the overall building is sand faced plaster,” explains the architect presently engaged on Gram Setu, a neighborhood centre for farmers in Valuna village in Meghraj, Gujarat.

Visualising the design

Designing the challenge and protecting in thoughts intricate particulars apart, certainly one of the difficult elements of bringing all of it collectively was the design’s communication to the college students, academics, and trustees, lots of whom are visually impaired. “Generally, architects use 2D drawings, models, and views to communicate the design with the users. Here, these tools became obsolete. There was a need to reinvent communication and participation tools,” says Sonecha, including that the group initially relied on cardboard fashions to begin a dialog with college students and academics. “They could visualise the built form through touch, but soon, we realised it wasn’t easy to comprehend the interior spaces and details.”

An exterior shot of the school.
| Photo Credit:
Dhrupad Shukla

To counter the problem, communication methods utilizing a 3D printer have been developed to assemble tactile drawings and strong fashions that the college students may contact and visualise areas. “We developed a code of textures to communicate the design to students and teachers. These textures overlapped the plan and helped them visualise the architectural spaces. The interior spaces had a different texture than the exterior, just like circulation spaces or classrooms. Moreover, each area (classroom, corridor, courtyard) was marked and written in Braille,” says Sonecha. In addition, 3D printed detailed fashions enabled college students to get a really feel of particulars like the furnishings, and the areas’ organisation and scale.

Before the development, a full-scale line-up was carried out on-site for all trustees, professors, and a few college students.
| Photo Credit:
Aakash Dave

Updates underway

Before the development, Sonecha says a full-scale line-up was carried out on-site. All trustees, professors, and a few college students circulated all through the house and gave their suggestions. “During the construction, the contractor built mock-ups of some techniques that could help the students navigate the building. For example, some of the students tried different wall plaster textures to clarify their effectiveness.”

3D designs have been developed to assemble tactile drawings and strong fashions that the college students may contact and visualise areas.
| Photo Credit:
Dhrupad Shukla

Over the previous two years, Sonecha says the post-occupancy survey remains to be underway. “We have made certain modifications to the connection from the hostel to the academic building for the ease and safety of the users. A few students gave feedback that in some classrooms the sound passes to another classroom via the intermediate courtyard. We are addressing it and we believe the thickening of vegetation will improve the condition,” he says, including that a number of structure college students from throughout India and overseas have visited the school to conduct case research as a part of their educational programme. “Many students have been contacting us to know more about the design process of the school. This project is relatively unknown outside of the architecture community, and I hope we can share this project and our learnings with others who may need it,” says Sonecha.

The materials and textures of the partitions and flooring, with clean and tough surfaces, information the college students all through the areas.
| Photo Credit:
Bhagat Odedara

While every of his initiatives have had their very own challenges, this explicit one was “special”. “We generally design buildings for users who depend on the visual ability to navigate and experience the place. In this school project the very sense that we use to understand the world i.e. sense of sight, became redundant. Therefore we relied on other senses for the users who perceive the world in another way,” says Sonecha, who goes on to speak about how, in architectural schooling or apply, he by no means delved into questions on such customers to this extent. “It opened my eyes to the realisation that in designing any building, be it public buildings or entire cities, we must consider a diverse set of users, ensuring that no one is excluded. The lesson of inclusivity that I learned from this experience has influenced my approach to new projects,” concludes Sonecha.