Most planners and architects can speak volumes about accessibility requirements [...].
Tamara Petrovic and Garner Oh, partners of the architecture and design firm 0 to 1, are intimately aware of such needs. To address their son’s difficulty with balance and motor skills, the pair developed a range of products for the home that transform his living environment into a safe and appealing space for all members of the family and resist the institutional aesthetic often seen in special needs products. — urbanomnibus.net

Enter Cities Unlocked, a project intended to help people with sight loss navigate cities. The brainchild of a blind Microsoft employee, it uses GPS, a 3D audio headset, and Bluetooth beacons, among other technologies. [...]

“I’m a blind person, I need to keep my ears open,” she says. The headset uses bone-conducting technology, in which vibrations create a “3D soundscape” around the user. — nextcity.org

In a recent opinion piece in The New York Times, geriatrician Louise Aronson advocated for a new type of building, one designed with an aging population in mind, which, she suggests, might be dubbed “silver” architecture. [...]

It being Veterans Day, this article got me thinking about architect Michael Graves, who recently designed a pair of houses for returning soldiers that follow through on many of Aronson’s suggested parameters for silver design. — smithsonianmag.com

Downey needed something tactile to work with, and he found it in a kids' toy. Spread out before him on the table are stacks of embossed plans ... marked up with brightly colored wax sticks. [...]

The sticks warm to the touch and bend easily; they can make precise angles, and—crucially for Downey—their tackiness makes them stick to paper. "Once I realized that, I thought, 'Oh, I could use that to draw on top of an embossed drawing.'" Suddenly, he had a way not just to read, but to make. — sf.curbed.com

Blind architect Chris Downey says that city planners and property owners should view future construction projects through a different set of eyes. [...]

Downey, 51, of Piedmont, Calif., lost his eyesight six years ago after undergoing surgery for a non-cancerous brain tumor. Since then, he has maintained his San Francisco architectural practice.

"I have a career without sight. But as an architect, I still have vision," he said with a grin. "The creative process is a mental process." — latimes.com

The NYT reported that Pedro E. Guerrero, a former art school dropout , died on Thursday at his home in Florence, Ariz. w. wynne A.I.A. offered up the following "Pedro has a wonderful book about his photographic work, and I am sadden to hear of his death. Mr. Wright called him ‘Peter’, but the story of his life with FLW is very nice and interesting account of the middle career of Mr. Wright."