ISABEL RUBIO ARROYO | Tungsteno

In 2008, architect Chris Downey suddenly lost his sight following an operation. With more than 20 years' experience in his profession, he knew that he wanted to continue working in a field he was passionate about. He learned to read braille and began using an embossed printer to reproduce and interpret architectural plans. To mark the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on 3 December, we explore the story of this iconic American architect.

Downey's journey after losing his sight

In 2008, Downey was admitted to hospital for surgery to remove a brain tumour. "The surgery was successful. Two days later, my sight started to fail. On the third day, it was gone," he explained in a TED talk in 2013. At first, a cocktail of emotions gripped the San Francisco architect: "Fear, confusion, vulnerability."

But when he stopped to think, he realised he had a lot to be thankful for. "I thought about my dad, who had passed away from complications from brain surgery. He was 36. I was seven at the time. So although I had every reason to be fearful of what was ahead, and had no clue quite what was going to happen, I was alive. My son still had his dad," Downey said.

The architect lost his sight at the age of 45 after undergoing surgery for a brain tumour. Credit: TED

Sounds, textures and smells that define cities

Downey never forgot that he was "not the first person ever to lose their sight." Worldwide, an estimated 2.2 billion people live with some form of visual impairment, according to the World Health Organisation. Of these, 43 million are blind. Downey left the hospital with a mission: to get the best training as quickly as possible and rebuild his life.

And he succeeded. "As an architect, that stark juxtaposition of my sighted and unsighted experience of the same places and the same cities within such a short period of time has given me all sorts of wonderful outsights into the nature of the city itself," he explained. Subtle sounds, textures in the ground felt through the grip of his cane, the warmth of the sun on one side of his face, the wind on his neck and his sense of smell became key tools for Downey to understand space and to move and orient himself. "I started to realise that my unsighted experience was far more multi-sensory than my sighted experience ever was," he said.

Downey uses touch to design accessible spaces. Credit: CGTN America

Reading a plan by touch

It took Downey just six months to return to work. He found an embossing printer, commonly used to teach braille to visually impaired children, and opened his own architecture firm. The embossing printer enabled him to reproduce plans in a format accessible to him, allowing him to study the details of the design and form a complete picture in his mind. In order to make his own contributions and revisions to the plans, he found a solution in Wikki Sticks, pliable wax sticks that can be broken and shaped to form new lines that adhere to paper, which allowed him to add and modify lines with ease.

As Downey explains, "reading a plan through touch is very different from looking at it visually, and in some ways more difficult: you don't see the whole immediately and then understand the details; you find the detail first and then have to build out to the whole." The architect had sight for 45 years, so he says he can still visualise the space. "It's just a matter of engaging in it intellectually as I, with my fingertips, review, study and move through it," he says.

In recent years, his work has focused on enriching the environment for the visually impaired. Among his most notable projects is the LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco, California. He has also worked as a consultant for HOK on the Duke Eye Center at Duke University Hospital and has collaborated on projects with companies such as Microsoft. He also played a key role as a consultant in the design of the Vision and Rehabilitation Hospital at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC).

The LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired in San Francisco. Credit: Architecture for the Blind

In addition to his work as an architect, Downey serves on the California Commission on Disability Access and is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. For him, architecture must go beyond the purely visual and embrace the tactile experience. He stresses that every detail—from the texture of walls to the design of handrails—shapes how we perceive and interact with the spaces we inhabit.

Tungsten is a journalistic laboratory that explores the essence of innovation.

Understanding road-surface conditions is essential to performing proper maintenance that improves highway safety.  

Sacyr InRoad is an innovative initiative from Sacyr Conservation based on artificial intelligence. This award-winning technology continuously assesses the main markers and indices that gauge roadway conservation.  

With this project Sacyr Conservation won the AXA Award for Innovation and Development in Road Safety at the 14th annual “Ponle Freno” Awards, organised by Atresmedia.

Continuing the success of the prototype, Sacyr now unveils InRoad Evo. With help from the Plan to Support Sustainable and Digital Transport (Plan de Apoyo al Transporte Sostenible y Digital) to promote industrialisation processes, the project has been scaled up through the manufacture of 11 devices that include improvements to new inclination and temperature sensors to help optimise the algorithm and yield more precise results.  

“The project features two technologies: one that analyses the road surface and another that assists in interpreting the results”, explains  Alejandro Otero, Innovation Project Manager for Sacyr’s Innovation Division.
Sacyr InRoad measures the force exerted by vehicles, ground temperature, etc. 

With regard to concession assets, it is essential to know the condition of the road surface in order to maintain a level of service and anticipate future deterioration, invariably with a focus on user safety.

To that end, Sacyr Conservation and Sacyr Concessions, together with the company’s Innovation areas, are currently collaborating to implement one of these devices on the Eresma highway (A-601 between Cuéllar and Segovia).
 

In addition, Sacyr Concessions will be able to feed the Prediction Tools, which will use the data collected by InRoad to predict how road surfaces behave in the long term, based on real data. The data obtained also helps the decision-making process when building new roads.  

Cost savings and increased road safety

Regularly attending to minor road damage not only improves safety, but is up to 3x cheaper than waiting to carry out major repairs. 

Sacyr InRoad was developed in conjunction with the Instituto Tecnológico de Castilla y León to boost service quality and fulfil Sacyr’s commitment to the environment and safety for both users and workers.  

Through artificial intelligence and other innovative technologies, the use of InRoad helps prevent accidents and reduce CO₂ emissions. 

According to a report by the Spanish Roadway Association (Asociación Española de la Carretera), a well-maintained system of roads could cut CO₂ emissions from lightweight and heavy vehicles by 9% and 6%, respectively. Moreover, flat surfaces with sufficient rolling capacity reduce fuel consumption by 3%-6%. 

According to data from the Highway Safety Department of the Public Prosecutor’s Office (Fiscalía de Seguridad Vial del Ministerio Fiscal), 30% of traffic accidents occur as a result of poor road conditions.  

This project is the successful consequence of the synergies derived from the various divisions that make up Sacyr, with the ultimate goal of circulating these devices worldwide to improve road conditions on an ongoing basis.