Image by: Swati Goel
The National Research council states Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are present from birth or in the child’s early development. ASD affects core human traits and behaviors such as social interactions, the ability to communicate, share feelings, express imagination, and create relationships with others. These behaviors are typically with the individual throughout their lifetime and affect how they learn, interact socially and with the environment, and participate within a community. Symptoms vary from child to child and even with the same individual over time.
When autismspeaks.org was founded in February of 2005, the estimated prevalence rate of children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder was one in 166 as reported by the CDC at the time. Over the next 15 years, the number of individuals with ASD increased at an alarming rate. In 2020, the CDC reported approximately 1 in 54 children in the U.S. had been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders.
There is no cure for Autism. There is only treatment through education; however, there are no uniformly accepted and recognized guidelines for the built environment of early education and intervention environments for children with Autism. Tola et al., 2008 conducted a scoping review of the built environment and its relation to autism and states that the built environment is an influential factor in the quality of life of people with ASD and that they often have a problematic relationship with the surrounding environment.
Table 1. Deficits in sensory process.
Those with ASD are susceptible to their environment and may have abnormal responses due to sensory processing deficits to noise, light, and textures. This deficit in the sensory process places individuals into two categories that aids in treatment and mitigation options within the environment’s design: hypo-sensitive and hypersensitive. Table 1 illustrates the senses in relation to the hyper and hypo-sensitive reactions to the environment. Children with ASD tend to cope with their stressors in a manner that often appears as an “inappropriate tantrum” to those unfamiliar with ASD. However, these “tantrums” are typically triggered by an “imbalance between the environment and the individual’s ability to adapt to it”. This becomes a challenge when “tantrums” or problem behaviors create a non-conducive learning environment.
The complexity and special considerations related to ASD drive built environment requirements such as specialized school settings. The needs of those with ASD are excluded entirely from all building codes and design guidelines. There is a huge need to understand how physical environments need to be designed to support the needs of children and adults with ASD.
Early intervention through education is vital to ASD treatment and growth. Problem behaviors in the classroom and educational environment become distractors and barriers to effective social and educational development. The design of classrooms often creates sensory challenges for children with ASD and exacerbates social and behavioral issues. Creating an environment that considers sensory issues of children with ASD through a well-designed classroom will help teachers and caregivers support each student in reaching their goals. The environment, modified through architecture and interior spaces, can constructively influence the problem behaviors exhibited by children with ASD. Design modifications might include color, texture, sense of closure, orientation, acoustics, and ventilation. The few guidelines that exist for designing better and less sensory-stimulating environment for persons with ASD provide recommendations around lighting, auditory, and tactile sensory mitigation.
Lighting greatly influences how space is perceived and can potentially create stress and discomfort. In some cases, fluorescent lighting tends to be an irritant, whereas natural lighting has been shown to improve attitude and academic performance in schools. Fluorescent light tends to flicker and be noticed by children with ASD.
Studies have pinpointed auditory processing difficulties as the most common sensory trigger for children with ASD. Noise control should be addressed early during the planning phase of construction. This can be done with flooring material choices such as rubber flooring, sound-absorbing insulation between thicker walls, and sound damping panels that line the walls. The most common cause of unwanted sound in a classroom often comes from the Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) equipment, which can be reduced by locating the air handlers away from classrooms and using large round and heavier gauge ductwork.
Hypersensitivity to touch is another sensory dysfunction in children with ASD. As a result, in order to learn how to engage with different materials, the engagement of the tactile sense is needed. Sensory integration therapy is a critical element of treatment and intervention. This provides an opportunity to implement design interventions through therapy rooms with different material applications and textures, craft rooms, and playgrounds.
Due to the challenges of designing mitigations into the environment for the children across the spectrum, designers and architects need to create universal solutions. Clause states “the goal of a designer or architect should not be to remove all sensory stimuli from the built environment but instead to provide flexible solutions that meet people with ASD, where they are to enable individuals with ASD to build a tolerance so that they can interact more independently within society in different environments.” This will require identification of environmental triggers for problem behaviors and to create design solutions that reduce these events. The less sensory-stimulating an environment is, the greater the opportunity to foster successful and productive interactions without added distraction, for teachers, caregivers, and students.
The Autism ASPECTSS Design Index establishes an evidence-based design guideline to be used in designing spaces for individuals with ASD. The ASPECTSS design index addresses many of the hidden needs of people challenged by ASD. An abridged version of the index is illustrated in Table 2.
Table 2. Autism ASPECTSS Design Index.
Early intervention emphasizing education can improve learning, communication, social skills, and underlying brain development for children with ASD. It is important that learning environments for children with ASD must be clear of distractions for this education to have a meaningful and effective impact. Classroom design can influence learning and positively affect the child in terms of sense of providing comfort, security, and a sense of well-being. Researchers and architects’ have the responsibility to determine which built environment characteristics create negative sensory experiences for children with ASD and to address those through conducive design features that enable distraction-free learning and growth opportunities.
