Abstract
Autistic people deal with their environment in a unique way due to differences in sensory perception. Designing housing for autistic people who are unknown is challenging. This research aims to help bridge the gap between architects’ design intentions and autistic users’ experiences. By combining interviews and participant observation, a case study of a residential facility shows how autistic users can experience things differently than architects assume. Differences relate especially to noise and temperature perception, the size of shared rooms, and visual stimulation in private units. Sensory preferences incorporated in the design based on particular examples of sensory symptoms within the autism spectrum do not necessarily match the preferences of the actual users. This case study contributes to an accumulative knowledge base of thoroughly studied housing designs for autistic people.
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Notes
- 1.
Autism refers to a range of conditions related to social behaviour, communication and language, and a narrow range of interests and activities that are unique to the individual and carried out repetitively (World Health Organization 2018).
- 2.
The term ‘autistic people’ tends to be preferred by autistic adults, whereas professionals rather prefer ‘person with autism’ (Kenny et al. 2016).
- 3.
To omit details that might allow participants’ identification, the setting’s and participants’ names were pseudonymised. However, the illustrations may enable people familiar with the setting to recognise it.
- 4.
A coach is a professional care provider, Flemish word is ‘woonbegeleider’, meaning guide or counsellor.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the developer, architects, coaches and residents who generously gave of their time and energy for this study. This research was supported by Vietnam International Education Development.
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Nguyen, P., d’Auria, V., Heylighen, A. (2020). Detail Matters: Exploring Sensory Preferences in Housing Design for Autistic People. In: Langdon, P., Lazar, J., Heylighen, A., Dong, H. (eds) Designing for Inclusion. CWUAAT 2020. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43865-4_14
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