“Although the total population of blind and visually impaired students at Tamkang University is less than one hundred students, school officials decided to build a cultural garden for those blind and visually impaired students and create a disability-free learning environment for minority students,” remarked, Dr. Jeng Hoang-ell, Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture, who indicated that Tamkung University was the only school that provided such an environment for blind and visually impaired students in Taiwan.
Such a disability-free environment was subsidized by the “Health Environment and Space Development Plan” directed by Bureau of Health Promotion, Department of Health, Executive Yuan, Taiwan two years ago. Designed by Dr. Jeng Hoang-ell with cooperation with the Association of Disability-Free Technological Development, the “The Blind’s Garden,” which bases its design on the concept of community-building, stands aside the parking lot next to Business Management Building. The “Garden” project includes “Blind Sports Area,” which is located in the front yard of Business Management Building where the Blind Resource Center is sited. The design has won great praise and received the subsidy again from the government this academic year (2005). The subsidy will be used to rearrange campus space in order to provide a more friendly and disability-free environment for blind and visually impaired students.
The project designer Dr. Jeng expressed that a strip area where a “Stone Garden” and a “Blind Coffee Shop” are to be build will be created alongside the parking lot behind Business Management Building, and a “Blind Restaurant” is also considered.
Due to the limited space of campus, the designer has to utilize the space wisely. The project has focused on blind and visually impaired students as its objects and determined to crate a disability-free and above all “friendly” environment. Moreover, this project design not only provides blind and visually impaired students a “friendly” environment, but it also presents others students an alternative experience of non-visual sensation.
The “friendly space” is designed with an outward expansion of wooden plank road which links “the stone park” in one end, the “Blind’s Garden,” “Blind Sports Area,” “Blind Coffee Shop,” and “Blind Restaurant” together and thus constitutes a theme park of “non-visual sensation.” In particular, the “Blind’s Garden” is designed according to a high standard for blind and visually impaired students and has created a leisure area for all students on campus. In addition, the future “Blind Coffee Shop” next to the parking lot aside Business Management Building will also provide a totally different kind of experience for students because it will be a totally “dark” environment. Dr. Jeng expressed with his hand gesture: “drink the invisible coffee,” which, he believed, will bring students a totally different kind of “non-visual” experience. ( Yu-lin Lee )
