Beyond Sight Preparatory School Competition Entry

A school for visually impaired children in grades K-8 that is located in the Krylatskoye district in Moscow, Russia. This school is built around the principles of sustainability and resiliency while focusing on connecting the inhabitants to nature by utilizing biomimicry as a design lens.

The team focused on the sense of touch, sound, and smell to add layers of information about the building. Surrounding the entire central courtyard on both Level One and Level Two is a continually moving water feature with aquatic plants.  The sound of water will help orient the students to where they are if they get disoriented. The team also included numerous tactile elements to help communication location within the building. Changes in flooring material that create different sensations when walked upon or when touched with a support cane (such as rubber or tile or artificial grass) will help communicate when a student is in front of a door that they might need to enter. In addition to the flooring transitions, the handrails of both staircases have braille embedded in them in order to communicate how many more steps there are left before reaching the desired floor. As a way to help younger children start to utilize their sense of touch, a peg board that teaches Pre-Braille Curricula lessons is installed in the circulation space outside of their classrooms (kindergarten and first-grade). These multi-sensory spaces help the students to understand size, weight, and spatial relationships. For the older students the sense of smell and sound are also included in the elements that are meant to go into the peg board to teach them about potentially harmful as well as pleasant smells and sounds. The sense of smell is also utilized around the cafeteria, to help signal to the students it is lunch time and that they are approaching that space, as well as pumping the smell of coffee directly in front of the teacher’s lounge to signify a staff-only room.