A batch of 27 students from the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology here has designed a “real life” project, which would help the visually-challenged perform routine banking transactions independently.
The “experimental pavilion” — a large fish-shaped installation loosely called a pod — was inaugurated at the GCP Business Centre in the city. Making maximum use of the sense of touch, the two-part pod is divided into a banking area and a cafeteria for the visually- challenged.
“We, as designers, realised that a lot of what is designed today does not cater to [their sense of touch to perceive the environment]. There is so much visual information around us and we don’t find public spaces that are welcoming to the visually-impaired. Hence, we decided to design a space within a public atrium having an integrated function of banking and leisure that mainly addresses them as the user,” said a display note from the second year students of Faculty of Design.
When a visually-challenged person walks into a bank, he or she would be greeted by a key map with various surface textures – such as ribbed or scaly surfaces. Each of these textures corresponds to the banking or leisure area, marked on the map in Braille. The customer then feels his or her way around the pod as per the textures. A relationship manager has also been factored in to take the service requests of the customers.
“Humane touch”The structure, which attempts to create the feel of an aquarium for a visually-challenged person, also breaks the conventional notion of office as an enclosed space and imagines a more open area where interaction is more “humane and personal.”
The design concept, developed in collaboration with the Axis Bank, started off as a studio project, but was extended to a real life project.
