“Who wakes up one morning and says to themselves: I’m happy to be blind.

Some people close their eyes and think: this is what blindness is!

No! That’s not true!

It’s difficult to make them understand. If they walk with their eyes closed, the sounds don’t mean anything to them.

They don’t hear the trees, nothing!

So they bump into everything. I guess that’s why we are pitied.”

A young girl quoted in the film The Blind Children by Johan van der Keuken.

The project offers an after school workshop for the children attending three schools in Ambarès-et-Lagrave near Bordeaux. The purpose of the workshop is to investigate architectural phenomenology inspired by the visually impaired space perceptions.

The workshop develops around Space–
Sense, a mobile and multi-sensory shelter. The goal is to train children to apprehend spatial and architectural systems present in the ordinary setting of the playground.

The activity offers an accessible place especially dedicated to the appreciation ofspace by blind and visually impaired children attending school in these establishments, while also being open to other children.

The goal is to get them to explore with a fresh perspective the familiar places ofthe school and its environment.
Architecture is used here as an extension of our sens organs. Schoolchildren are enriched by the awareness of their perceptions and discover otherness through the presence of children with disabilities. Such experiences awaken and structure their feeling of belonging to the world