How a blind potter's artist's studio was created by these two LA designers

The exterior of the ceramics studio, designed by Knowhow Shop, behind Katz’s home in Los Angeles. Photos: Tanveer Badal/The New York Times

For Don Katz, a typical day begins with a light breakfast at his home in Los Angeles, the United States, before he heads to his backyard pool to swim a few laps. After a therapeutic soak in the spa, Katz prepares to go to work on his ceramics.

His commute isn’t far: He passes through the French doors of his bedroom, down three steps to his backyard, makes a sharp right around the spa, then takes a few more steps before turning left into the freestanding ceramics studio behind his house.

But for Katz, who is 48 and lives alone, every step has been carefully planned to make the journey as seamless as possible. This is because he is blind.

At 25, Katz lost his sight after bacterial meningitis put him in a month-long coma and left him paralysed. Doctors told him he would never walk again, but after years of rehabilitation and occupational therapy, Katz relearned how to walk, feed himself and adjust to his sightless reality. He even picked up some new hobbies along the way.

“I first took a pottery class at the Braille Institute Los Angeles,” he said. “I had been trying for 23 years to figure out what to do with my life, and ceramics just fits me. I can sit, I can be creative and I never run out of ideas of what to make.”

It took a while for Katz to convince his parents that he could live on his own, but in 2021 he bought a 1,680sq ft (156sq m), 1928 Spanish Revival home, picking it for its proximity to the restaurants and nightlife of West Hollywood and for its single-level plan.

At the age of 25, Katz lost his sight after bacterial meningitis put him in a coma. During his rehabilitation period, he picked up ceramics as a hobby.

“I am mobility impaired on top of my blindness, but I knew I could navigate the layout independently, and I thought I could replace the detached garage with a ceramics studio,” he said. “So I bought it sight unseen.”

To design the ceramics studio and revamp the yard, Katz contacted Johnston Marklee, a local architectural firm he admired because of its work on the Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios at the University of California, Los Angeles. The firm referred him to a smaller studio in the Highland Park neighbourhood called Knowhow Shop, which had worked with many artists.

“Because we have our own fabrication studio, we could build models and communicate with Don in ways typical firms might not be able to,” Justin Rice, who founded Knowhow Shop in 2010 with Kagan Taylor, said.

“We started with a generalised idea of how a blind person might communicate with us, but we quickly learned that Don has a very specific way of navigating and understanding the world.”

The partners learned that Katz’s sighted memories of an early trip to Morocco made him partial to arched windows and doors and that his enhanced sensitivity to sound, smell and touch yielded unexpected design possibilities.

Though they typically use drawings and physical models to render a design scheme, the partners worked only with media that Katz could feel and touch.

Their first step was to build a model of the property that was 5.5ft (1.6m) long – 75% larger than the scale they usually use. This ampleness allowed Katz to reach into the model and move around blocks representing his pottery wheel, kiln and furnishings to test different layouts.

Reaching over the model’s partial-height walls, he could feel the location of windows, doorways and rooms, while textured fibreboard differentiated landscape elements from hardscape.

Inside the 630sq ft (58.5sq m) built studio, the designers lined windows in recessed panels of birch plywood as a navigation aid for Katz as he trailed his hand along walls, and they built casework with setbacks to identify each door and drawer. Shelves have lipped edges to prevent fragile ceramics from slipping off.

The studio and exterior are organised around what the designers call “moments of navigational grounding”, or “beacons”. These include a courtyard demarcating the entrance to the studio, a set of four concrete “welcome mats” integrated in the exterior mahogany decking to delineate thresholds, and a set of outdoor fountains.

“When Don gets to those spots, he knows where he is and what his next options are,” Taylor said.For the studio, the designers lined windows in recessed panels of birch plywood as a navigation aid for Katz as he trailed his hand along walls, and they built casework with setbacks to identify each door and drawer.

Designed by Chris Kallmyer, an artist who makes sound-based objects and installations as part of a project called Furniture Music, the granite fountain in the front yard acts as sonic wayfinding for Katz, who often depends on rideshares for transportation.

“Sometimes Don couldn’t locate his home after being dropped off,” Kallmyer said.

“A fountain is as ignorable as it is interesting, so it can be on all the time to guide Don home.”

A second, smaller fountain in the backyard attracts birds with a gentler sound. Though Katz originally requested “a concrete jungle” to avoid tripping over lawn, the designers convinced him to include landscaping.

“The garden acts as a bird habitat and connects Don to the wider biome of the city,” Kallmyer said. “He’s not alone because these birds come visit.”

Now, as Katz prepares to host his first open studio on the 23rd anniversary of his blindness, he reflects on what it has meant to live in a place all on his own.

“It’s my sanctuary,” he said. “I call it House of Liberty because it’s freedom for me here.”

For the designers, the process was about entering a specialised realm of the senses.

“It was about figuring out Don’s strengths and preferences and leaning in to those,” Taylor said.

Kallmyer agreed: “It reoriented us to think of Don as enabled in these other ways, helping us uncover new possibilities for creating more layered, rich and sensory places.” – The New York Times