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this is 99% invisible I'm Roman Mars

Beethoven continued to write music and wrote some of his best music after he lost his hearing.

So he couldn't hear his music at all.

He could only hear the construction in his mind. And as architects, we have all sorts of different ways

of experiencing architecture, both in its built form,

in its creation through tactile drawings and models besides our own mental

constructions. So Chris Downey asks me what's more preposterous? Composing music

you can't hear or designing architecture you can't see.

My name is Chris Downey, I'm an architect.

And in case you haven't guessed it yet, he is a blind architect.

Chris Downey lost his site about three years ago after being an architect for nearly two decades.

Clearly there wasn't any book out there on how to be a blind architect.

So really the best thing to do it is just to get out there and try.

And once I did that, I quickly realized that there are ways to perceive and understand

drawings and design both in two-dimensional form and in three-dimensional form and

there are any number of ways to react to it and advance it, create it, just like anybody else.

...