Canadian Art Déco sites are often in jeopardy to make way for newer developments. The state of the former Eaton’s Ninth Floor Restaurant is of particular concern, especially in regards to its iconic design and nearly total erasure due to drastic re-development activities. By a practice of interior design, research and design explorations are co-ordinated to contextualize the site and its circumstances. The Ninth Floor is adaptively reactivated as an Art Déco microtopia known as Le 9e. New museum theory and practices are overlapped with critical art to direct the site’s purpose and programming. An approach of bricolage guides the implementation of re-design strategy and conservation processes to craft interior realms that are as much ideological as they are corporeal. Part museum, part commercial enterprise, and even part activist, Le 9e operates as both a social and analytical epicentre in its promotion of Art Déco education and conservation.

Canadian Art Déco sites are often in jeopardy to make way for newer developments. The state of the former Eaton’s Ninth Floor Restaurant is of particular concern, especially in regards to its iconic design and nearly total erasure due to drastic re-development activities. By a practice of interior design, research and design explorations are co-ordinated to contextualize the site and its circumstances. The Ninth Floor is adaptively reactivated as an Art Déco microtopia known as Le 9e. New museum theory and practices are overlapped with critical art to direct the site’s purpose and programming. An approach of bricolage guides the implementation of re-design strategy and conservation processes to craft interior realms that are as much ideological as they are corporeal. Part museum, part commercial enterprise, and even part activist, Le 9e operates as both a social and analytical epicentre in its promotion of Art Déco education and conservation.

After experiencing moments without sight, strong moments of overcoming space and evaluating behaviour on the basis of information received by non-visual options are fixed in the memory. It was the familiar space I went through without seeing it, that showed new values and suddenly I perceived it completely differently. I focused on the materiality of the movement, which described not only its physical boundaries, but also the various sensible stimuli radiating towards my body and senses. This feeling of experiencing space differently, I would compare to feelings of when you re-discover a familiar place from childhood. We already look differently at the long-fixed images of children's eyes and minds, we are even able to compare this perception now. It is not that we did not have good eyesight as children, but we did not realise overall contexts and did not have certain experiences that now help us lead lives in a certain direction. While going through no-sight-experience myself, I found myself in a situation like that. I was like a child who knew a certain space only to a limited extent, in other words a space limited by sight. The initial intuitive assumption that looking at visual impairment not as a disability but as another means of experiencing world became the basis of inspiration for my project. I began to realise the fact that the perception of space in kids, does not only depend on the functioning of the eyesight but also on the functioning of their brain. Depending on where the children grow up, they experience changing states of the surrounding environment, which is related to their emotional, mental and physical development. However, they do not always grow up in an environment that can stimulate cognitive development and help personal, social or education growth. Thus, such a space cannot provide enough different stimuli for a certain purpose, which should help them thinking in and realise the wider context. Between the age of 3-7 years, a child's brain develops very quickly, using play or various spatial experiences. With its plasticity, the brain offers us a large volume of memory space, where almost everything that a child under the age of 7 sees around him, is initially noted down. But what’s really important is what information remains in the memory and won’t disappear. This is precisely that kind of information that has been strongly supported and influenced by various stimuli, which can always be maintained better than the unsubstantiated constant repetition of situations. Here I tried to insert a multisensory experience, which is used by the blind and visually impaired people as a vital need when moving through space and to compensate their eyesight. This experience is strongly connected with emotions, which are the main element of all long-lasting memories and experiences that we remember. That is why it is appropriate to use multisensorialism also in a learning practice, whether this is led by a teacher or through free play. In children that are not visually impaired, multisensory stimuli can support healthy emotional development but also the formation of synapses in the brain. At the same time, I see as a benefit in inter-connecting of these two groups of children, because they can be an inspiration to each other in their differential processing of information from the surrounding environment. The aim of the work is to create an inclusive space for the sighted and sight-impaired. The aim for the space is to support the possibility of obtaining information using multiple stimuli, which are proposed to be designed within the object-functionality and the overall space of the preschool facility.