Jeffrey Mansfield

Deaf schools are architecturally and spatially ambiguous. Featuring elements of campus and asylum architecture, their intentions are unclear: Are they to educate or exclude? Through welfare, assimilation, and resistance, the architectural forms and vocabularies of Deaf schools tell a broader story of evolving attitudes towards Deafness, disability, and normalcy, as well as civic virtue, modernity, and national growth and identity. Their story is one of industry, biology, pathology, politics, and power. In the room-size installation Architecture of Deafness, Jeffrey Mansfield juxtaposes a selection of photographs and documents addressing Deafness from a hearing perspective (wall section) with those coming from within Deaf culture (table section), offering two remarkably different views on how architecture and ideology frames Deafness.