For the last three years I've been trying to find out as much as I could about architectural adaptations to better accommodate people on the autistic spectrum. I've learned a great deal from professionals in The Netherlands who were involved in designing and building treatment facilities. On the other hand there's a growing body of literature around this topic. Some of the most important articles are to be found on http://www.ud-da.eu/information_nav.htm, Mostafa, Humphreys, Whitehurst and Scott have made key-contributions, so have the British architect Beaver and Khare & Mullick who have, like Mostafa proposed a matrix of design principles. Hendriksen & Kaup (2009) (http://www.kon.org/urc/v9/henriksen.html) constructed matrixes of classroom design, drawing from literature which was partly new to me. Until very recently my impression was very little research had been done. “Advancing Full Spectrum Housing: Design for Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders” by Sherry Ahrentzen and Kim Steele, however made me doubt this. (Their work is part of a larger project by the Urban Land Institute Arizona, Southwest Autism Research & Resource Center and Arizona State University.)
Now I started a quest for effect research, testing one or more design principles which were published over the past 6 or 7 years. Many seem to work in practice, but I’ve not come across any rigorous tests [with the possible exception of Mostafa’s (2008) classroom-measures where the number of children was inversely related to their extremely impressive effects.]
The context may be education with which most articles seem concerned, but can also be (semi) independent living (Ahrentzen & Steele) or any other, including treatment facilities of any degree of ‘intensity’.
Ultimately I’ve come to believe there’s a limited number of motives behind design recommendations. My hypothesis is there are basically three: 1) the senses, 2) specific autistic phenomena such as (most notably) central coherence and 3) social difficulties which can partly be remedied through design.
The main principle behind all this is basically the same as is behind many other measures around people with ASD: they can learn to a certain extent to adapt to the 'neurotypical world', beyond which the environment has to adapt to them. ‘The environment’ is usually taken to mean the social environment but should include the physical and the built environment as well. My working hypothesis is that physical measures can be just as effective as most therapeutic ones and combinations of the two even more.
Dear Flip,
Interestingly enough, we are conducting a workshop on this specific topic at the beginning of January, in Israel. I would be happy to provide you with more details and contacts with colleagues who study this area.
Please write to [email protected]
Sincerely,
Eitan
Hi Flip,
There has been some work done at the Helen Hamlyn centre for design in the UK by Andy Brand entitled "Living in the Community: housing design for adults with autism". I think this would be very relevant to your research. Here is a link to the work http://www.hhc.rca.ac.uk/2988-3019/all/1/Living-in-the-Community.aspx where there is a video and you can download the publication.
I work with Andy on a deep pressure product called Squease so if you would like to speak to him directly. I am sure I could arrange. Best contact email for me would be [email protected]
Thanks
Sheraz
Dears Eitan and Sheraz,
Thanks so much for both of your suggestions and the mediation to get in touch with people who are working in this field!
I will share this website with one of my colleagues whose student prepared a research project on schoolyard garden design for students with autism. Perhaps she will be interested in contributing to the discussion.
Thanks a lot, dear Dea. However: my website isn't on line just yet. It'll take another few weeks, alas.
I mean the ResearchGate website so that she knows about the discussion.
Hello, all. In my and my graduate student's literature review (related to landscape, but some overlap to architecture), we find a real lack of empirical finding. You may be interested in this article: INCORPORATING THE BEHAVIORAL DIMENSION IN DESIGNING
INCLUSIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR AUTISM
Rachna Khare and Abir Mullick
Archnet-IJAR, International Journal of Architectural Research
I correspond with Kerstin Dautenhahn Hertfordshire U. and happen to know she works closely to the area. Check her work?
I will check it out. My colleagues and I at K-State are just launching a pilot study related to therapeutic effect of nature access for children on the spectrum. We won't have results until this fall, however.
Thank you all for all your suggestions and contacts. I must confess (as sme of you may have found out) the announced website is not up yet. I made a great effort to do it in "autism week", didn't manage and then was sucked into the maelstrom of other projects...
It will happen soon though, I promise.
You may want to have a look at this study, which is based on an analysis of auto-biographies by people with autism:
Baumers, S., Heylighen, A. (2010). Harnessing Different Dimensions of Space. The Built Environment in Auti-Biographies. In: Langdon P. (et al.) (Eds.), Designing Inclusive Interactions, London, UK: Springer-Verlag, 13-23.
Thanks Ann, I'll look into it.
By the way: I studied your masterthesis about this subject and incorporated a review of it in an unpublished paper about the present state of affairs in this subject.
Also, I suspect we were both present at the doctorate session of Stijn Baumers in Louvain last year, which, from my perspective I found disappointing.
I've been working for years with the famous architect David Palterer on the realisation of group homes for people with intellectual disability and/or ASD. We reviewed the literature on QoL and living arrangements for PwID. We put a summary of this review and some original reflections raised during our collaboration in a paper recently published on Advances in Mental Health and Intellectual Disability.
Thanks Marco, that's excellent news and shows once more how useful a platform such as this can be. I've requested a full text. If that's too much trouble I suppose I can download it directly from the journal. Just say so.
Thanks again.
Dear Flip, no problem. I've just sent you an e-mail to your website address with my work e-mail address.
Alternatively you can contact the secretary of my research centre. The e-mail address is in the website homepage: www.crea-sansebastiano.org.
Hi, I myself architect and my son is with autism. Your hypothesis is reasonable. In the specific case of my child, I use some simple design clue to help him easily learning how to take care of himself for example learning cleaning teeth by using big mirror with mother as a modeling. It's a kind of therapy as it took very long time to train him how to clean teeth, then it suddenly so easily just with a big enough mirror showing a modeling at the same time. Space organization also help people with autism feeling safe and have a clear environment awareness. I believe that adaptable design would help people with autism have a better quality of life.
Nguyen Phuong,
Wonderful contribution. My brother has had Traumatic Brain Injury since he was six years old from a car accident in 1969. There was not extensive literature. We learned alot like you demonstrated. Cheers, Paul
Great to find this question is still alive!
I'm presently workng on a website in English and Dutch on which the results of my investigations will be available for people on the spectrum, parents, teachers & administrators, therapists, reseachers and everyone else involved in bettering the autistic environment. The first 10 recommendations (out of some 200) will come online on December 11th. Please take note: architecture-for-autism.org
I have done a significant amount of research into design for mental illness - and while autism and other gross developmental disorders aren't considered mental illnesses in the same way as schizophrenia (say) is, there are some unifying principles that I have discovered that apply across a large spectrum of disorders, including autism.
1) Symptoms are triggered by environments that contain negative affordance. It's a complicated idea that spans neuroscience and perceptual psychology, but well worth knowing about if you're interested in understanding how the environment affects people in general (for more, see my paper - Golembiewski, Jan. (2013). Lost in Space: the role of the environment in the aetiology of schizophrenia. Facilities, 31(9/10) 427-448.) In short, affordances are like invitations to act, and negative ones invite fear, delusions, perseveration and other unwanted behaviours. For people with autism places that really embody 'negative affordances' include hospitals and threatening situations, where a doctor might want to give an injection etc (Johnson, Norah L., & Rodriguez, Dana. (2013). Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder At a Pediatric Hospital: A Systematic Review of the Literature. Pediatric Nursing, 39(3), 131-141).
2) Many mental illnesses (and autism appears to be among them) show an abnormal resistance to positive affordances. These are apparently the source of the 'signs' - that is the noticeable absences of 'normal behaviour' such as emotional responsiveness. Healthy (neuro-normal) people pick up on positive nuances and invitations to laugh, smile and be happy, but people with certain conditions don't - or have a much lower responsiveness at least. It's my professional opinion (as yet untested due to lack of funds) that this can be countered by enriching the environment with far more positive affordances.
3) An important issue for all mental illness is how narratives are structured into built form. Narratives are an important way to swing experience from being perceived 'negatively' to 'positively.' More about that in Golembiewski, Jan. (2012). Salutogenic design: The neural basis for health promoting environments. World Health Design Scientific Review, 5(4), 62-68.
I've a great deal more on this subject, but this isn't the place to write an entire review. If you're thinking of writing one, why don't we collaborate?
Most of my papers are on Researchgate (I think) otherwise you can email me or find them on academia.edu.
J
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280997107_ASSESSMENT_OF_A_LONG-TERM_DEVELOPMENTAL_RELATIONSHIP-BASED_APPROACH_IN_CHILDREN_WITH_AUTISM_SPECTRUM_DISORDER_%28.%29
Article Assessment of a Long-Term Developmental Relationship-Based A...
I can recommend our latest work recently published by AUTISM
Article From the Emotional Integration to the Cognitive Construction...
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