As workers become increasingly packed in modern, open-plan offices and coworking spaces, designers keep working on high-tech solutions to allow employees to focus, often with the unintended effect of highlighting office layout shortcomings.

The latest of these gadget-based solutions is a set of “blinkers” from Panasonic’s “Future Life Factory,” designed to block out sights and sounds from the wearer’s sides so they can hone in on what’s in front of them.

These Wear Space units, they believe, will help keep work environments distraction-free. They were created in collaboration with Japanese fashion designer Kunihiko Morinaga. Somehow, though, the photographs just reinforce a sense of dread, with humans arrayed in front of small screens like captured cattle. But who knows: maybe they will prove useful barring other spatial redesigns.

“As open offices and digital nomads are on the rise, workers are finding it ever more important to have personal space where they can focus,” said the company. “Wear Space instantly creates this kind of personal space – it’s as simple as putting on an article of clothing.” The user can then adjust their field of view and reduce peripheral vision to desired levels. This is coupled with noise-cancelling technology for audio isolation. Of course, no such potentially dystopian, present-day design would be complete without a crowdfunding campaign, currently scheduled for late 2018.

To address the needs of a visually impaired client, architects in Thiene, Italy, worked from the start to integrate a custom wayfinding system into the structure and layout of this home, including a creative set of tiles with varied textures to guide the owner from room to room.

The owner, who had lived in one place for 55 years until this point, was understandably concerned about learning to navigate a new environment, working with So & So Studio (images by Stefano Calgaro) to make the transition easier and more intuitive.

The first step was to create a central corridor to minimize any confusing maze effects that a more complicated layout might create. All entrances and exits are located along this spine, as are primary places like the kitchen and bedroom.

The architects worked with the client to map out her routines and paths, organizing their design around these regular activities. Potential hazards like thresholds were also avoided.

Perhaps the most stunning part, though, is the glyphic alphabet encoded in the floors — textured stones create patterns designed to be read and followed by the client, a built-in system for wayfinding. A guest might notice these standing out and think them a simple visual queue, when in fact they work for the sightless as well as the sighted.

Braille type is often included as alongside conventional letters, but “Braille Neue” typesets blend both visible and tangible characters in the same space, creating hybrid alphabets that anyone can read. Developed by designer Kosuke Takahashi, the solution is simple and elegant, giving equal priority to both sighted and visually impaired people.

The trick, essentially, is to use the two-by-three point layout already employed in the braille alphabet as a framework for the overlapping visual text. As a secondary effect, the visible overlap helps educate those who can see it about braille equivalents.

Takahashi has developed both Japanese (Braille Neue Standard) and English (Braille Neue Outline) variants. Theoretically, these could also be used to “print over” existing texts — as in: lay ink over braille or even vise versa in some cases.

Specifically, though, the typeface’s creator hopes this solution will be employed in signage for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics in 2020. After all, those represent a time and place designed to bring people together.

Braille is named after its creator, Louis Braille, a Frenchman who lost his sight as a result of a childhood accident. In 1824, at the age of fifteen, he developed a code for the French alphabet as an improvement on night writing. He published his system in 1829. The second revision to this touchable type system, published in 1837, was the first small binary form of writing developed in the modern era.

Have no illusions, these awesome urban optical eye charts test not only your vision but the varied ways in which we visualize the world around us.

If you can’t read the characters on this downtown Toronto eye chart, what the heck are you doing behind the wheel?? Flickr users jbjelloid and John Tavares captured this clever use of an optician’s rear facade (the front is remarkably unremarkable) on January 27th of 2011 and December 4th, 2012 respectively.

What’s In Your Wallet?

If you were an optometrist working at the now-abandoned Alameda Naval Air Station, then this handy-dandy portable eye chart would rest cheek-by-jowl with your cash and credit cards. How this particular  mini-chart ended up on the clinic floor is a mystery. Maybe the doctor was mugged… one might say he was robbed blind.

Optical Illumination

Maybe we’re wrong but these curious eye chart wall sconce thingies (for want of a better term) would seem to be the optician’s equivalent of the iconic barber pole. This one isn’t lit – photographer Adam Slater captured several images shortly before the abandoned West Park Hospital/Asylum was demolished – and it’s a pity someone didn’t “liberate” it for creative re-use. Then again, maybe someone did: as far as we know it might be illuminating Slater’s living room right now.

Real And Spectacle-er

Flickr user Bill Walker celebrated Self Portrait Thursday on June 23rd of 2011 with the above entry posted the previous day. Walker’s composition is all about texture, normally an attribute related to touch but in this case focused on vision.

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Inner City Visions 12 Eye Opening Urban Eye Charts

Slated to be constructed in just 7 years and cost $300 billion (more than the GDP of Egypt), this ambitious design for a brand new capital city of 5 million people is unprecedented – if completed, it will be a record-setting endeavor. And it is not just a conceptual vision, or at least not entirely- the site has been selected and a 100-square-kilometer test section has already been approved by the Egyptian government.

The new capital-replacing city is described by its proponents as “the catalyst for an Egyptian renaissance” and “a momentous endeavour to build national spirit, foster consensus and provide for the country’s sustainable long-term growth.” Inspired in part by Silicon Valley, buzzwords about in the promotional materials related to the project, tentatively titled “The Capital.” It is intended to be a “smart city” and “hub of innovation” to carry its country into the future of technology and sustainability.

Transportation is to be a big component of the design, both within and beyond the city – it is meant to become both a hub as well as a walkable metropolis. Lessons are being taken from extant clogged and congested urban centers, particularly Cairo. However, it is not clear through the gloss and glamour just how these innovations will manifest themselves – there are some statistics, though, that are at least superficially impressive.

Environmental friendliness is also high on the list, with plans to sustainable local food, use eco-friendly modes of power generation (wind and solar) and, of course, deal with waste and recycling in a green and efficient manner, avoiding a repeat of Cairo’s infamous “Garbage City.”

Some might question whether the futuristic renderings are really representative of what is planned or if they are simply designed to impress. Critics note that the scheme seems too good to be true, and may be intentionally positioned as a Utopian project in order to draw outside investors. Building a new city from the ground up may result in that space being more efficient, but it leaves one wondering what the country has planned for its former capital. Perhaps there is room for generosity in expectations, however – lessons learned and developers deployed in this massive construction project could be turned around afterward and reassigned to fix existing cities.