This Design Director Is Bringing Awareness to the Architecture of Deafness
Today, Mansfield heads MASS’s Deaf Space design portfolio as well as its Restorative Justice Design Lab. The subjects in his current work queue range from deafness and memorialization in Deaf schools, a publication on hospital architecture and colonialism, and projects that, as Mansfield puts it, “illuminate and spatialize the trauma, injustice, and racism of mass incarceration.”
Simultaneously, he has spent the past three years documenting the architecture and landscape design of 50 of the world’s Deaf schools, with sidebar visits to Deaf clubs and other community spaces. Supported by the Graham Foundation and the Library of Congress, Mansfield is turning this research into the Deaf Space Archive, which explores both architecture’s impact on the Deaf experience and the impact of deafness on space design.
A rendering showing MASS Design Group’s submission for a design competition to rethink the campus of Gallaudet University.
MASS Design GroupThe archive stands to benefit