Christopher Laing

For the final essay in the series, architectural designer Christopher Laing gives a personal account of how he started Signstrokes, which introduces standardised sign language for architecture. Deaf people are not new to architecture, however they face significant barriers because the sign language vocabulary of the profession is not standardised and lacks terms to express architectural concepts uncommon in everyday language. Christopher, drawing upon his own difficult experience at university, where he suffered the consequence of few deaf people before him studying architecture anywhere. The knock-on effect was that very few British Sign Language interpreters knew architectural terms or context, having never worked in the field before. Christopher had to take on the additional responsibility, on top of his degree, of helping the university interpreters familiarise themselves with the jargon and signs to use when interpreting the lectures. Christopher collaborated with Adolfs Kristapsons to create the corpus dictionary of architect signs that everyone could use. Christopher shares with us the long, laborious process of creating new signs. Christopher asserts that not only are these signs useful for the deaf community - but actually seeing what words mean, helps everyone understand each other. Christopher hopes that Signstrokes will inspire other deaf professionals to persevere with their chosen dreams; and show how it is possible to get creative with jargon. Christopher maintains that ultimately we all want to understand the world we live in, and each other, and language shouldn’t be a barrier to that. A Flashing Lights Media production for BBC Radio 3.