Cognitive accesibility, architecture, and the autism spectrum

Keys to design

Berta Brusilovsky

• Publisher: Entimema
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9788417528645
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture Design

This text deals fundamentally with design and architecture: the route of spatial recognition, which is the least known —or worked on— within the approaches of the autism spectrum given its difficulty in being synthesized in a paradigm or normative set. The objective is to create a framework to approach the design of environments and buildings, in order to facilitate spatial development in everyday life and, especially, in learning situations.The spatial route, which is the project, creates: - A set of spatial coordinates that liberates the user from the anguish of not recognizing, of not understanding the space in which he is developing. And that offer him the possibility of finding the way, directing him to where he needs or wants to go.- Structure of the exterior and interior, with their corresponding activities placed in a comprenssible way through concepts of organization: functional and sensorial sequence of events. And creation of spaces for group and individual tasks, paying special attention to places of transition and recovery between opposite or different activities, both physical and emotional.- The aspects that are developed in terms of recommendations are synthesized in a construct that brings together the aspects of general, functional, formal and sensory organization of plans, elevations and details. Achieving with these "person-space" adjustments a higher quality of personal life and of its affective and learning environment.- Design components that in the case of autism should be considered in order to seek with the project greater facility of understanding, use and space-emotional development of people from childhood to adult life.

1. INTRODUCTION

Now, as I begin writing a new book – number 12 in the collection on the subject of cognitive accessibility – I believe it will be the end to the series that began in 2011, with my dissertation for the Master’s Degree in Accessibility and Design for All at the CSEU La Salle University (Aravaca, Madrid).

The previous works came one after the other and in sequence, from the moment the final work of the Master’s degree marked the direction it was to follow, a path that was paved thanks to the collaborations that allowed the text to be enriched in form, content and concepts. My initial enthusiasm has never waned; on the contrary, it has been renewed every time I finished one of the texts to begin the next one almost immediately.

The present book, which is the result of the same enthusiasm, will however be the last in this series as the theme which will be addressed brings the cycle to a close: that of diversity, which has encouraged me to investigate architecture from the perspective of neuroscience, a theme which I was not originally focused on, nor did I know how far I was going to go in studying and researching it.

Another reason that tells me “perhaps this will be the last” – although we should never say never to opportunities for creation – is the strange relationship that cognitive accessibility, neuroscience and architecture, so little studied and researched by disability and accessibility organisations, have maintained in their approaches and working methodologies. These are complex topics also for professional architects, whose interest I hope I have managed to spark thanks to their dissemination through various media, among them the Instituto de Formación Continuada del Colegio de Arquitectos de Madrid, which focused its attention on them by assigning me several courses, firstly on the elderly and later on autism.

The interest with which professional sectors of Latin American and European countries have received these innovations, incorporating them into their university teachings, projects and congresses or specialised conferences, is one more incentive to keep me on a research line that so far, for many years, has not ceased to motivate me.

Despite the difficult road and the barriers that exist in areas that are little researched – and which for this reason must be doubly justified – I have continued, considering that nothing in life is definitive and that, in the long term, those who read what is written, wherever it has been archived, will be as equally enriched as I have been with the knowledge that I have acquired, which is also the reason and rationale for this volume.

The case of cognitive accessibility in environments and buildings belongs to a type of complex innovation to which many doors have been closed, especially by organisations with decision-making power in terms of standards, which is why this legal limbo may unfortunately continue for some time yet. Most importantly, it is essential that it reaches schools of architecture, promoting a teaching of the subject that also includes complex human components (HNS2) in addition to those that are currently included in the curricula: historical, functional, formal, and aesthetic aspects. In addition to ethical aspects, which is where I include the rights of people to an environment that takes into account the aptitudes and qualities of human beings that are understood on the basis of neuroscience, and which for the moment do not appear in traditional textbooks on arc...

Table of contents

• COGNITIVE ACCESSIBILITY, ARCHITECTURE, AND THE AUTISM SPECTRUM
• Créditos
• Dedicatoria
• THE AUTHORS
• FOREWORD
• GETTING STARTED: A VISUAL GUIDE
• 1. INTRODUCTION
• 2. COMPONENTS FOR DESIGN
• 3. NEUROBIOLOGICAL COMPONENTS
• 4. CONDUCT AND BEHAVIOUR
• 5. GOOD DESIGN PRACTICE
• 6. DESIGN RECOMMENDATIONS
• 7. PLAYGROUNDS AND COURTYARDS
• 8. FINAL WORDS
• 9. BIBLIOGRAPHY
• 10. ANNEXES
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• Notes
• INDEX