Stuck.

Just came back from researching in library and my head is cracking. (And yet am so very excited...
I really do have a LOVE/hate relationship with Archi...)
Reason? It's the beginning of a new project and my tutor is a weirdly cool guy. His project brief: To make an Observatory on Mt. Emily park (It's somewhere in Mt. Sophia. The whole studio is still banned from visiting the site so we can concentrate on our concept.). The programs of the Observatory will be: observing the day time sky, night time sky, and the city.

Thinking that it's an amazing, romantic program, but knowing that the Singapore sky is very light polluted I happily went to research on astronomy and found out that binoculars can be used to stargaze and supposedly will enable us to see more stars. So grabbed my Dad's binoculars and camped at school (easier to find dark places). Was out at 1 A.M looking at the night sky...yep i's true i could see more stars with binoculars but it's still nothing to boast about. Obviously the night sky program most probably would not work.

Next day, happily told that to my tutor. His reaction: "Well, do you know why I gave you that program? Because in Singapore it would not work! The atmosphere is too thick."

. . . . . . . . .

I knew there had to be a catch somewhere...aaaaa!!! Oh well, but that's exactly why I so like being under my current tutor. Forces me to squeeze the last drops of creative juices outta my brain..hahaha..

And so I was thinking..how to make people appreciate a night sky that is just a blank, weird purplish color...Then my mind wandered to thoughts of "Surely, the only people who'd appreciate that kind of sky are people who've never seen the sky before...". Yep, the visually impaired or the blind.

....Got me thinking... we take "Observing" as such a simple, mundane, trivial thing. But what about blind people? Maybe they want to see the blue day sky, the black night sky, with all their heart..but they cannot. How do these blind people "observe" the world? How do they tell time? How do they tell one place from another?

And so that is the idea that I'm playing with in my head right now. An Observatory for the Blind. Am I becoming too cretive for my own good? Hm....I foresee challengingly fun but stressful times ahead...Feels that I'm getting myself into trouble, actually..

But surprisingly, there are people who thought of it before. There's a workshop that helps blind people "explore" the outer space. (Just google "observatory blind") , and NASA published books about the universe that has textures to help the visually impaired explore sunspots, constellation etc. It's titled "Touch the Sun" and "Touch the Stars".

Hufh.....hence all is not lost....yet....