Steve Saling, retired landscape architect with ALS, designs residence he can control by blinking

2016-07-08T13:38:00-04:00

Unwilling to accept a life utterly dependent on caretakers, [Steve] Saling designed a series of systems that let patients with ALS control their environment in the assisted living center with ...blinks and facial twitches. “The notable impact that ALS had on my ability to design is speed,” he said. “I am a lot slower. [But] Because much of my profession had been computerized and I excelled in computer-assisted drafting, I was still able to convey my ideas with a lot of precision.”

Read more about amazing architects who never let their disabilities get in their way:

Working out of the Box: Francis Tsai

Francis Tsai, previously featured on Archinect's Working Out of the Box, passes away

Building Voice: Visually impaired architect, Christopher Downey, lectures in Downtown Miami

The nuanced design of deaf spaces

Francis Tsai, previously featured on Archinect's Working Out of the Box, passes away

2015-07-07T13:28:00-04:00

“Ever since I was a kid, I knew I wanted to draw,” he said in late March, just before his death. “Architecture was the foundation that I ended up using in design work. I had to fill in the gaps.”

At the time he was diagnosed with ALS, Francis Tsai had reached a highpoint in his career. Trained as an architect at the University of Texas at Austin, Tsai had established a successful freelancing career creating the fantasy and sci-fi worlds he loved, pivoting his architectural skills into contributing artwork to the likes of Marvel Comics, Dungeons & Dragons, the film Sucker Punch, and games like Myst and Tomb Raider. The ALS diagnosis, when Tsai was only 42, was devastating – patients on average live for only two to five more years, and the disease's encroaching whole-body paralysis threatened to take away what Tsai loved most: drawing.

By 2012, a couple years after his diagnosis, ALS had left Tsai completely paralyzed, save for the ability to smile. Determined not to stop making his art, Tsai began drawing using the "Eye Gaze" system, that uses infrared cameras to track eye movements and translate them into commands on his computer. He pioneered the technology's application for...

Archinect - News

Steve Saling, retired landscape architect with ALS, designs residence he can control by blinking

Francis Tsai, previously featured on Archinect's Working Out of the Box, passes away