Stepping outdoors and experiencing the familiar as new — interview with Design Council Expert, Andy Shipley
Many of us rely predominantly on our vision to experience spaces — this sense often dominates our relationship with our environment. Design Council Expert, Andy Shipley, hosted an interactive session on 19th of May 2022, for the Design Council’s Community of Practice (COP) that aimed to help us understand how to experience a familiar place as wholly new by tapping into our senses. It requested those participating go to a familiar outdoor space near their office or home, join the online session, and follow Andy’s guidance.
Andy was born with a visual impairment which has played a significant part in his life and the direction of his work. Andy’s career began by working in the housing department within local government. After attending and being inspired by a training course run by the Centre for Accessible Environments, he went on to specialise in inclusive design.
Andy has worked in local government, the Disability Rights Commission, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, chaired the Fieldfare Trust charity, and is now the founder of Natural Inclusion, a company that creates experiences for groups and individuals that looks at focussing on our environment using all our senses. Andy campaigns for social inclusion, connection to nature, and disability equality. In our conversation, he offered us insight into the world of inclusive design, the importance of taking time to connect to our environment, and how these skills can be used to design sustainable spaces, products, and systems.
On Thursday 19th of May, you ran an event called ‘Stepping Outdoors: Experiencing the Familiar as New’ for the Design Council Community of Practice (COP)’. What did you ask the participants who joined the call to do?
“When we are familiar with places, we acclimatise and become sensorially-blind to them — it’s like our brains and bodies go into autopilot. The aim of the session was to encourage participants to go to a place that they feel is familiar to them and reacquaint them with the aspects of nature that surround us but often go unnoticed — aspects like gravity, the soundscape, sensations of air, and even our own breathing.
‘Experiencing the familiar as new’ — why was it important to go to a place that participants believed was ‘familiar’ to them?
“We’re increasingly dependent on our direct vision (what we see in front of us). This has suppressed the other senses that we use to interact with the world and therefore we often miss things, I guess this is a consequence of living in a post-industrial and digital society. I wanted to remind everyone we have a rich array of senses, and we are sometimes oblivious to them. There are practical reasons as to why we should discover our non-visual senses, but we have a need to feel connected to the world and the lifeforms that exist.”
On your website, it says ‘in our diversity lies the solution to the social and environmental challenges we face.’ Can you explain this further?
“The solution to the huge climate and environmental challenges we face may well lie in engaging and mobilising everyone and identifying those who have found solutions. We must create equitable conversations with people who are from the most diverse array of backgrounds possible to learn from each other, share knowledge, and create the change that we need to bring about.”
Why is your line of work important for those working in design and the built environment, and do you think your work contributes towards raising awareness and creating ways to address the climate crisis? What can designers do?
“First and foremost, it’s about building consciousness. If you equip designers with knowledge about the (sensory) diversity of nature, you build a positive feedback loop with the natural world. Designers then design with knowledge of the natural world. Biophilic design is a good example of this and something I’m really interested in — we need to create a stronger presence of nature in the places that we live, work and play.
We should be using nature as a way of cooling the places we build, building within existing treescapes in a way that doesn’t clear cut before we develop and being sensitive to the contours and features of the natural world in the way that we construct new development.”
What would your recommendations be on designing inclusive places?
“When you are vision-dependent you often screen out any acoustic information. We need to think about how to create more acoustically inclusive spaces. For example, the acoustic experience in stations is often horrendous. This is because there is so much information that is being provided using public announcement systems, the location of speakers, and the volume. That could all be designed better; it should be designed judiciously rather than universally.”
Do you have any examples of places that have been designed that focus predominantly on the senses other than sight (i.e., hearing, smell, touch, and taste in some cases)?
“What we want to do is to experience the same elements of nature as everybody else and not be herded into a segregated area to do that. In terms of the built form, there are some good examples — using sprung flooring in the corridors for those who are deaf or hard of hearing so you can hear someone approaching through the vibrations in the floor.
The best example is noticing the seasonal change — whether it’s birdsong, sounds, or smells. For example, the smell of ivy is strong in the woods in October and November which acts as a sensory cue for birdlife and insects. Ecological relationships are often dependent on sensory cues and understanding this is crucial to creating an inclusive and biodiverse ecosystem. By depicting nature in a multisensorial way, we’re not just making it accessible for people who can’t see, we’re creating a much richer appreciation of the natural world for everybody. There’s an opportunity for us to lead experiences for the rest that haven’t learnt to use these non-visual senses in the same way.”
I was fortunate enough to be able to join Andy’s session that he hosted for the Design Council. The session and subsequent interview was enlightening in many ways: not only did he open my eyes, (ears and nose!) to a surrounding that I had taken for granted; he also offered a glimpse of what it is like to experience the built environment from someone who focusses on sound, smell, and touch. In reconnecting with our senses using Andy’s methodology, we are able to spot elements of buildings, landscape and nature that we may have been unaware of previously. This knowledge could be invaluable for people working to design inclusive places that support regenerative ecosystems.
Interested in hearing more?
- Listen to Andy speaking about his work on BBC Radio 4 In Touch.
- The Seasonal Sensations podcast is designed to help you feel closer to nature whilst outlining the seasonal changes we experience.
- Complete the 14-day sensory odyssey.
- Listen to 99% Invisible’s podcast episode on A Field Guide to Water
- Listen to Monocle on Design’s podcast episode on The Natural World
