Locations | Blindfolded Tour: An Eye Opening Experience
If you were in downtown Toronto last August 19, around Queen and Yonge, you might have witnessed an unusual sight: a man, holding on to one end of an orange shoelace, leading a second man, holding the other end of the shoelace, slowly around the downtown core. The second man was blindfolded, hence the orange shoelace.
People must have been pointing, stopping and staring, whispering among themselves. Was this some sort of hazing ritual? A lost bet? A TV show? I have no way of knowing because although I was there, I was the one wearing the blindfold, holding one end of the shoelace.
At the other end of the shoelace was Jonathan Silver, a philosophy grad with a keen interest in sensory space. He had offered to take me on one of his blindfolded tours, so that I could further my own research into sensory space by experiencing a familiar environment without the use of vision. We followed a course (predetermined by Jonathan, but unknown to me) that included a variety of spaces. Jonathan would slacken the string from time to time, which was my signal to stop, and ask me what I thought of the space I was in. How did it make me feel? Was it a space I wanted to spend time in or did it make me anxious? Was it wonderful or weird? Comfortable or creepy?
We walked very slowly at first. Without sight, even maintaining my balance presented a challenge. Every change in grade or surface texture meant I had to adjust my internal gyroscope. If I had been able to see these changes, my body would have adapted automatically, without my even being aware of it. After a while, the pace picked up a little. I am normally a brisk walker and it made me very uncomfortable to be walking this slowly, but once my senses started to perk up, things improved.
It was a warm summer day and we visited a surprising number of outdoor spaces that were quiet and sheltered. Jonathan was careful not to let me know when we passed through a doorway, so at times, I couldn’t tell whether we were indoors or outdoors.
Ground and floor textures played a huge part in how quickly and easily I could move through a space. On a smooth indoor floor surface, my walking speed picked up. On a rough outdoor path, every footfall had to be made tentatively. As architects, we know that walking surfaces affect our general feelings about a space. Colour, texture and pattern help to create a mood as well as affecting the direction, speed and character of our motion. But these are all visual clues and we respond to them without really noticing.
It dawned on me that not everyone gets to restore their sight by removing a blindfold after an hour. I gained a degree of respect and admiration for unsighted people who experience the non-visual world all the time. In addition to the things I learned about my own sensory response, I became aware that there is a lot we, as architects, landscape architects and planners, can do to make the environmental experiences of unsighted people a little better.