(gentle music) - By the time I was six as a dancer, I couldn't see anything in focus without wearing glasses.

I remember my glasses slipping off my nose at the ballet bar and flinging off my face during pirouettes, so I would just resort to performing without relying on my sight.

Having to overcome this visual impairment as a kid helped me with my confidence as a designer and also my empathy for other people.

I really wanted to apply that in a functional way, which is how I was interested in interior design and what led me to study at the School of Visual Arts.

My thesis project is among the most personal that I've done.

My grandfather lost his sight due to macular degeneration.

At the point where I was really in the prime of my dance career, he was at the most severe visual impairment.

Really, he couldn't see anything.

He would still come to every show, sit in the front.

He would tell me that he could get the flavor.

I really wanted to investigate what he meant.

What was the flavor?

How could I get more of it?

How could I give other people more of it?

My thesis project is a dance space for the blind and visually impaired.

I started researching the site that I could do this in.

It's in Chelsea, and Chelsea is of the most accommodating neighborhoods to the blind population in New York City.

There's nearby restaurants that offer braille menus.

There's crosswalks that have the audible component.

There's a center for the blind called VISIONS at Selis Manor.

It's the only dedicated residents for people who are blind and visually impaired in the city.

I was lucky enough to be able to connect with Sylvia Perez, who's the former director, and she gave me a tour of the center.

The level of embodiment that all of these people had was unprecedented for me.

We'd be bumping into people in the hallway, but it wasn't a, "Oh, I'm sorry, I bumped into you."

It was an opportunity to say, "Hi," you know, "this is Sylvia.

Who am I speaking with?"

And to prompt a response and kick off a conversation.

I think that the sighted population has so much to learn from the way that the blind user is very aware of their environment.

Most people who are visually impaired still have a perception of high contrast environments and light and dark, which led me to think about how traditional performance was activated literally by a spotlight.

To emulate that in the architecture, the building could really take on this language through these trapezoidal forms.

The studios become these sunken rooms with sunlight pouring in from above them, where a dancer will enter and feel the sunlight on their skin and feel the way that the floor plan is so open and the atmosphere is wide, and they would know that this is a spot to move and to dance.

The perimeter of all of the floors of the studio are textured within an offset distance of three feet, so that once a dancer knows they're approaching a boundary, they can actually touch that boundary.

There is a speaker system so that you can have a choreographer or a mover direct where the audio is coming from, and then the dancer gets this spatial, temporal understanding of where they should be at what time, and how close or far that they should be to sound.

I wanted to close with one of my favorite quotes by Deborah Burke: "A building might even encourage you to spread your arms and dance around because good architecture can do that."

Dance can honestly be a metaphor for life, a way of being expressive and collaborative because your environment makes you feel safe enough to do so.

My experience with and around vision loss has given me a glimpse of what it feels like to be alienated from your environment.

As I grow older into the design profession, I realize that all bodies are delicate and they deserve a sensitive architecture that's empathetic to their needs.

- Morgan has a really strong awareness of the physical body and people.

She's looking at what the body needs to do, what people need to do, where they need to be, what their needs are, and what their limits are in space, and with form, designing it to them, not hoping that they will conform to it.

- In the spring of my junior year, we got a brief for a housing project that would serve any group of migrants that the student would determine for two months, it had to use water in some way.

There had to be some kind of system evolved.

The migrant group that I decided to design after was for Caribbean migrants.

I really wanted to use a building to change the perception of water from this agent of trauma to an agent of healing.

This is a model of one of the residential units that I'd be proposing for my project Ebb and Flow.

Rainwater will land in these little scuppers and drain down the facade.

At the bottom of all of the units, there's a water collection tank where the rainwater will be then used to service the rest of the building.

I really wanted to be public facing about the water system that this building took on with the emphasis on the concept being so about the child's experience.

I think a huge part of a child's experience in adolescence is education.

This transparency about how the water works in the building and how it's gathered, and then where it goes into this hydroponic garden that residents actually will get vocational experience.

Children see that and they develop interests and the way that I developed interests around industry and infrastructure and water.

My dad is a commercial diver.

He has devoted his life to service in the form of creating infrastructure to aid transportation for the city.

Reflecting on my time at SVA and moving forward into grad school, I really would like to use this education that I have to make others feel seen and listened to and understood just simply by existing in their environment.

- [Sinclair Voiceover] Morgan's a star.

She's a really well-rounded human being.

She supports her peers, she supports the room she's in.

The same way she works as a designer, she looks at context first.

She puts the work and she puts other people first, and then she responds.

She's got a really strong character and a wonderful sense of humor.

It is without oppressive ego.

That itself is an extraordinary gift.

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