Color Conscious, A Pandemic-Era Response to Spacial Awareness
Team
Noah Gear, Irene Font Peradejordi, Danielle Borris, Yuan Li
Location
New York, NY
Year
2020
In this project, we explored how colometrics can be used to provide a sense of wayfinding for people in a closed space to help diverge crowds and avoid previously heavily occupied spaces. We focused our spacial design analysis on the future of office spaces and how they can be imagined as a safe and socially distant space where employees would still feel connected to each other.
This diagram shows spatial issues with typical office floor plans. The current office layout is tightly packed, and it is difficult to move around without passing through someone else on the way. Many offices have open floor plans with shoulder-to-shoulder desks, leading to potential infection risk.
This was our first prototype for creating a safe space. We started by implementing a filtration screen that both creates a space division and filters the air.
The filtration system consists of three layers, two outer structural layers, and the inner filter layer. Its inspiration comes from the frog's respiratory organ, being able to breathe in and out while still structurally supported. The goal was to maximize the area to speed up air exchange.
In our next iteration, we created alcove-like workstations that can be conjoined together and separated for different types of interactions. The units are modular and versatile. They allow for different types of configurations for different types of programs, such as a lunch break or presentation settings, while still keeping proper distancing and spatial barriers.
When the units are arrayed in a number, they provide many more circulation routes for the occupants to pass through. Giving occupants a choice and agency to choose their preferred circulation routes to disperse traffic and, therefore, greatly reduce the risk of being exposed to the virus.
This concept would also allow for filtering space dividers whenever there is a need to enclose the space completely.
The color change on the unit indicates the level of traffic and occupancy of the area. The more passengers passing through or, the longer the users occupy the space, the deeper the color will be. This spatial indicator can inform the passengers to choose other circulation routes to avoid the risk.
We design a physical model prototype to test out how the colorimetric symptom can demonstrate occupants’ movement in the space. In this prototype, a ball is used to simulate occupants' movement passing by a representation of a segment of the colorimetric unit. The ball's movement is captured by a passive infrared sensor, transformed into heat by a heating pad, and demonstrated as color by the heat-sensitive color-changing fabric.
In these images, we can see some details of how the different parts of the prototype come together.
