Design for autism. Research on autism and built environment, develop an evaluation tool of hospital space for ASD users

Autism is a lifelong developmental disability affects every aspect of people’s lives. The main challenges that people with autism face are related to everyday social communication, interaction with others, and repetitive behaviours. Apart from these core deficits, the problems in sensory processing make them easily experience sensory overload, and it may result in anxieties or collapses in a building environment where various sensory elements are contained. Their unstable emotions, poor motor skills and the unaware of risks that are likely to put them in danger and make them have an urgent need of a more important safe space. Series of difficulties prevents them from using building space and related services like ordinary people, especially when it comes to health-related buildings. This paper attempts to study how to build an autism-friendly medical space and develop an evaluation tool of hospitals built environment for ASD users. The forces research area in hospitals is reception halls, circulation spaces, and ambulatory spaces. The paper consists of 3 phase: (1) The knowledge is collected through a literature review and case study, which is about characteristics of the space needed by ASD users, design guidelines of the autism-friendly space, and how to apply guidelines and concepts to architectural design. (2) Developing a prototype of an autism-friendly tool. It including 6 characteristics of the built environment and 12 criteria that can have positive or negative impacts on the built environment. (3) Apply the prototype to the medical environment, and research how to improve the performance of 12 criteria in the hospital to create an autism-friendly hospital environment. Eventually, the prototype can be transformed into a tool specially designed for an autism-friendly hospital environment will be obtained. It provides design guidelines and can be used as an evaluation tool. The research results of this article will be presented with a series of design considerations and strategies for each of the 12 criteria. Based on the resultant, an evaluation tool can be developed to assess the accessibility of ASD users in 3 hospital areas, aiming at providing non-barriers medical space for ASD users and helping them use medical services successfully.