Vision commonly determines a person’s experience, but is it the best way to explore architectural space? By questioning this dependence and incorporating the other senses, it is possible to evoke a unique and possibly new experience. People experience a multitude of senses daily, but due to their ease of understanding, they are experienced  in a hierarchical order. Vision is usually experienced first and begins to evaluate the environment from visual clues. From this, movement is determined causing people to circulate towards experiences they have knowledge of. By contrast, sound and touch are generally neglected as sensory mechanisms deployed to understand spaces. Both of these elements allow the user to be involved with their surroundings through their understanding of the space. While sound can be used to understand the activity and use, touch permits the user to be conscious of the physical characteristics associated with every object and solely explores it intimately. Smell acts as a connection between a user and their previous experiences. Generally smell has a negative connotation for being associated with pollution, therefore is usually negated and unnoticed within design. Taste, another sense not usually associated with architecture, can be experienced from subtle elements found within the air. Architecture and art installations have struggled to convey this idea to people. Both of these forms of design hint at methods to deeply understand and explore architectural designs. With the intention of pushing and possibly manipulating sensory experiences, this thesis design will develop an elementary school for the hearing and sight impaired. Its goal will be to turn architecture into a method of aiding people and making the public aware of the rich sensory experiences that surround them.

A learning center was designed to rehabilitate people who recently underwent hearing or sight impairments. the program consisted of classrooms, a library, auditorium, administration offices, and cafeteria laid out to strengthen their sensoral perception as they moved from space to space. this layout was created to reacquaint people with how manhattan was laid out and operated.