Today, Google's daily Doodle celebrates the work of Japanese inventor Seiichi Miyake. See above screenshot. (I wonder who at Google is responsible for coming up with these. Imagine having to post something new every day.)
I am sure that most of you have come across these tactile paving blocks before in the subway or in some other public space. But I for one wasn't familiar with their origin.
Invented by Seiichi Miyake on his own dime after a close friend started becoming visually impaired, they were first introduced in 1967 on a street in Okayama City (Japan) next to a school for the blind.
Since then, these tactile blocks -- or Tenji blocks -- have been adopted all around the world as a way to help the visually impaired navigate our cities and public spaces.
There are two main types of blocks: ones with bars and ones with dots (which are kind of like domes with their tops cut off). The bars indicate a safe path of travel. And the dots tell you when to stop (such as at the edge of a subway platform).
The idea is that these different kinds of blocks can be detected with either a cane or through your feet as you walk over them. It's a pretty simple idea, but it clearly seems to work.
All of this reminds me of a recent community meeting I was at where I heard a lady -- who was visually impaired -- speak eloquently about the importance of thoughtful materiality in our public spaces. I think she may have been an architect or designer.
One of her comments was that echoey spaces can be overwhelming for people with limited vision. That makes perfect sense to me. Unfortunately, I think it can be hard to fully appreciate some of these design subtleties unless you're living it.
But as Seiichi demonstrated, maybe all you need is a close friend who is living it.
ISA Architects recently completed a project in North Philadelphia called Tiny Tower.
It is a 6-level, 1,250 square foot single family home built on a small 12' x 29' lot. That's about the footprint of two parking spaces. It feels like a house you might find in Japan .
Its siting is on a secondary street, akin to a laneway here in Toronto. As you can tell from the above picture, the adjacent parcels are largely undeveloped and/or used for parking.
The height of the house is 38 feet and the section looks like this:
The kitchen is in the basement (along with a light well). The living room is on the main floor (entrance to the house shown below). The third level is a workspace. And the rest of the floors are bedrooms. There's also a rooftop patio. All of the circulation happens on one side of the house.
I don't consider 1,250 square feet to be a small house and so this post is not about that. "Tiny Tower" does, however, feel like an accurate name.
I like these kinds of projects because they are about taking something with little perceived value -- in this case a small parcel of land -- and creating something cool.
That's how you create the most value. You have to discover and do things that most other people are overlooking.
