Harnessing Different Dimensions of Space: The Built Environment in Auti-biographies

Abstract

An understanding of diversity is a key principle in the development of theories, tools and techniques of design for inclusion. In assembling new perspectives for inclusive design, we want to gain a more accurate insight into the diversity of people’s interaction with the designed environment. People with autism spectrum disorders, for example, due to their particular way of thinking, make sense of their surrounding world in a unique way. Starting from this notion, our research questions the relevance to them of the meaning attributed to the built environment in our society, by studying the interaction between the world of experience of people with autism and the design of the built environment. In this paper, we investigate the way people with autism talk about space and the importance they attach to their physical environment, as reflected in stories and autobiographies of people with autism themselves—in short, auti-biographies. By analysing their own descriptions, we try to gain more insight into an autistic way of thinking and acting in relation to the built environment.