DOROT
Designing Multiple Ways Into The Labyrinth
Gathering Focus
DOROT supports older adults in aging in place through programs that foster social connection and meaningful engagement in New York City.
The Collabyrinth designed a hands-on workshop that invited participants to explore the labyrinth through their eyes, hands and imagination.
The challenge was to introduce an unfamiliar form in ways that accommodated different approaches to learning and making, without diminishing the pleasure of discovery or the satisfaction of mastering something new.
Design Response
The Collabyrinth adapted its participatory labyrinth practice for older adults, creating multiple ways to explore the form through visual, tactile and creative engagement.
The workshop moved from two-dimensional exploration to three-dimensional making, with each stage designed to build familiarity, encourage experimentation and support individual expression.
Materials were chosen with attention to ease of handling, sensory richness and personal associations. Familiar objects such as chocolate coins and candy hearts offered opportunities for nostalgia, while freshly fallen autumn leaves gathered at Fordham University in the Bronx brought the colors and textures of the season into the experience.
Throughout, the labyrinth provided a common framework while leaving participants free to explore it in their own ways. Each stage provided another way to encounter the labyrinth, progressively building familiarity and confidence.
What Became Possible.
Participants quickly moved beyond following instructions to experimenting with the labyrinth on their own terms. They repeated exercises, introduced color and decoration, and asked thoughtful questions about the form and its possibilities.
As the workshop progressed, curiosity gave way to growing confidence and independent exploration. Participants engaged with the materials, compared approaches and developed their own interpretations of the labyrinth.
The experience demonstrated how thoughtful design can create the conditions for learning and creative participation without prescribing the outcome.
What It Demonstrates
Designing with elderhood in mind meant considering how participants would encounter an unfamiliar form, develop confidence through experience and engage with materials in ways that suited them.
Accessibility was approached not as a matter of simplifying the experience, but of offering multiple ways into it: seeing, tracing, drawing, observing and building.
The workshop also demonstrated how a labyrinth experience can respond to its setting, even at tabletop scale. Locally gathered autumn leaves brought the surrounding landscape into the room, while familiar objects invited participants to bring their own associations to the work.
At DOROT, the labyrinth was both the subject of learning and a framework for exploration.
The design provided the path. Participants determined where their curiosity would take them.