Garden for the Blind :: Architecture Design Essays

Garden for the Blind Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class is a book with extremely high ambitions. Its aim is nothing less than to identify the newest social class, promote consciousness of its own identity, and inspire it to use its immense resources reshape society as a whole. This new â€Å"Creative Class,† according to Florida, is composed of members of any profession that are paid to exercise their creativity. Florida traces the development of this class from the 1980’s to its definitive emergence in the mid-1990’s, and notes how it has assumed an increasingly dominant role economically and culturally. It is an inspiring and daunting realization: that as many as thirty-eight million Americans make their living through creativity, and that so much of our prosperity or failure depends on their most minute actions. Furthermore, Florida asserts that the esoteric habits of the members of this new class, their collective likes and dislikes, directly shape the values and norms of our culture. Thus, if it were made conscious of its own existence, the Creative Class could remake society along intelligent, rational lines. It is a heartening thought that by simply fostering creativity among all people, mankind could peacefully and effectively recreate the mold of its own existence. According to this model, education and communication could replace warfare and violence, making human civilization something far more peaceful and validating. It is an enormously difficult goal, but one well worth seeking. An example of this creativity in action is the adaptive environment of Dans le Noir. Seeing visitors are plunged into a situation utterly unfamiliar to them, forcing them to cope to the best of their ability while helping them to identify with those who live without sight. Yet darkness is no obstacle for the visually impaired, who have long since learned to overcome this barrier to normal functionality. Without being dependent on the single faculty of sight, they are able to rely on the other senses and are in effect more fully cognizant of themselves and their surroundings than many sighted people. Contemporary movies like At First Sight do justice to this fact, as do older films like Wait Until Dark, in which the protagonist loses her sight in adulthood and is forced to cope with the loss.