Redefining architecture for accessible design

For most people, architecture begins with what they see. For Andrew Gipe-Lazarou and his students, it begins with sound, touch, memory, and movement.

This year, Gipe-Lazarou, assistant professor in the School of Architecture, is expanding his work in accessible design for people who are blind or visually impaired through a set of interconnected initiatives that blend teaching, technology, and real-world impact. From an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven accessible design seminar and immersive exhibition to the Blind Design Workshop, the work challenges architecture’s visual bias while training students to design spaces that can be more intuitively understood and navigated by a broader range of users.

“Architecture is often treated as a visual discipline,” Gipe-Lazarou said. “But space is experienced with the whole body. When students are pushed to design beyond sight, it fundamentally changes how they understand architecture, and their responsibility as designers.”

A model rooted in experience

Gipe-Lazarou’s commitment to accessible and inclusive design began when he was a student at the University of Maryland and co-led a summer STEM program organized by the National Federation of the Blind, which introduced architecture to blind and visually impaired youth. When Gipe-Lazarou joined Virginia Tech, he proposed launching a similar program. The result was the Blind Design Workshop, now entering its fifth year, in partnership with the Virginia Department for the Blind and Vision Impaired, a state vocational rehabilitation agency that supports career exploration for young people from across Virginia.

Each year, the workshop brings blind and visually impaired students ages 14 to 22 to the Blacksburg campus for an intensive, five-day introduction to architecture. Participants explore space through tactile models, multisensory activities, and collaborative design exercises, created by architecture students who serve as mentors and instructors.

“It’s a mutually beneficial partnership,” Felicia Williams, Richmond regional manager at the Department for the Blind and Vision Impaired. “The participants are discovering architecture as a possible career, and the architecture students learn how to think about space in ways they’ve never had to before.”

Learning to design beyond sight

For many architecture students, the Blind Design Workshop is their first sustained engagement with accessibility.

Erin Harrigan, senior and recipient of the Robert Svoboda-Dale Carter Scholarship, said the experience sharpened her awareness of how exclusionary architecture can be – and how much potential there is to do better.

“Growing up, one of my close friends had cerebral palsy, and I saw firsthand how architecture can create barriers,” Harrigan said. “I entered architecture school wanting to create a built environment that gives autonomy and dignity to everyone.”

The workshop, she said, showed how deeply architecture relies on vision.

“It challenged me to think about how to present architecture non-visually,” Harrigan said. “Large models with rich texture, tactile drawings you can trace with your fingers – this kind of multisensory design forces you to think about touch, sound, and smell just as much as sight.”

That shift, she said, benefits far more than a single user group.

“When architecture is designed to be inclusive, it creates a safer and more comfortable experience for everyone,” Harrigan said. “High-contrast signage helps blind and visually impaired users, but also people who don’t speak the language fluently. Step-free entrances don’t just help wheelchair users – they help parents with strollers and delivery workers, too.”

Introducing AI as a design partner

Gipe-Lazarou’s courses also explore how AI can support accessible and inclusive design. Workshop participants collaborate with large language models to solicit suggestions as they develop their projects. They also deploy AI-image generation with descriptions of space, or in combination with drawings and photographs of physical models.

“AI allows early students of design to visualize space with language, which is incredibly empowering,” Gipe-Lazarou said. “They can describe space, generate representations quickly, and get feedback on those representations. But it also forces them to be clear about their values and intentions.”

Rather than replacing human judgment, he said, AI has the potential to sharpen it.

“When you’re presented with hundreds of options, you have to know what you’re about,” he said. “And here, an awareness of the human condition becomes essential.”

For Neharika Gupta, a junior, the Blind Design Workshop reshaped how she understood both design and herself.

“One of the biggest insights I gained was realizing how complex and varied blindness actually is,” Gupta said. “It exists on a wide spectrum, and accessibility cannot be approached as a single condition.”

The experience also revealed how underdeveloped many designers’ non-visual awareness can be.

“We rely so heavily on vision,” Gupta said. “The workshop pushed me to think about sound, airflow, texture, temperature, and spatial orientation. It taught me that architecture is not just about what we see, but what we feel, hear, and inhabit. It showed me we can fundamentally shift how we design, how we perceive others, and how we understand ourselves.”

A broader impact

Beyond individual projects, Gipe-Lazarou hopes the Workshop will serve as a model for other architecture programs. Every state has a vocational rehabilitation agency like the Department for the Blind and Vision Impaired, he said, creating opportunities for similar partnerships nationwide.

“I’m interested in showing how feasible and sustainable this kind of collaboration can be,” he said. “This isn’t a one-off – it’s something that can be replicated.”

For students, the impact is often long-lasting. For example, first-year student Arabel Garofalo’s grandmother had suboptimal cataract surgery.

“Spaces once familiar to her become fragmented because the world of design relies solely on a visual regime of hierarchy and symmetry,” she said. “Andrew’s research reframes blindness not as a restriction but as a different way to interact and move through tactile interspaces through sound and texture – inspiring my grandmother, me, and countless others.”

As students continue to experiment with AI, immersive environments, and multisensory design, Garofalo sees a common thread.

“Through the Blind Design Workshop, the gap between architecture and individuals disappears,” she said. “Architecture is reframed as an act of care – through tactile materials, sensory trust, and A.I. as an interpretive instrument that aids non-visual ways of articulating space – reimagining what design can be when accessibility is treated not as an accommodation, but as a foundation.”