Category

Region

autism-experience center

autism-experience center

Category
Daylight in buildings - Region 4: Asia and Oceania

Students
Yuan Li
Xiangyi Zheng
Zhiqiu Li

Teacher
Xin Ma

School
University of Sydney

Country
Australia

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Architects are not expected to only design to meet basic functional needs but to maximize user comfort. Since the built environment provides the large majority of sensory input-including light, acoustics, textures, colors, spatial configurations, ventilation, etc. By manipulating the interior environment we have the power to shape and engage participants with the limits and wonder of human perception. With this idea in mind, we are seeking to utilize sensory architectural design to challenge the interaction between people and the built environment.Just take a moment to think about what would it be to enter a building that disregards any criteria for a “comfort” environment? What would you expect to feel? frustrated? trigged? Or even anxious? While these negative feelings are hypothetical, there are many disadvantaged groups who had to deal with such feelings constantly around the environments that we consider comfortable. Namely, people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The condition is a lifelong neurological difference, which can affect sensory processing, speech development, fine and gross motor skills, and social communication. This project seeks to raise people’s awareness of autism and their conditions with an ambition to evoke self-reflection. Therefore, the best way of exhibiting and educating about autism than engage the participant in a first-person perspective of how autism experience the world.According to WHO, every one in 100 children is diagnosed with autism. This is an overwhelming number and often an ignored group. Autism patients are restrained from immensely appreciating the full extent of the built environment. Sensory Intolerance is the major condition that limits them from processing sensory experiences as they are either hypersensitivity (over-responsiveness) or hyposensitivity (under-responsiveness) to a wide range of stimuli.The spatial arrangement is a manifestation of participants’ experiences as they dive into the mind of autistic children. The volume intersects each other, letting the different senses and characteristics of the space progressively melt into each other. The curved interior wall marks a progressive departure from the reality of the outside to more abstract and concentrated experiences. In the center of the circulation at the confluence of all corridors, there is vertical space with the absence of any sensory stimuli it is also like a getaway space from the overwhelming space. a pure space for people to reflect on their senses and the way they will use them once they reconnect with the city. The internal circulation is non-framed. Participants are free to change directions at will, encountering other individuals from the alternative route. The volume encourages people to experience their unique journey and centers them for a better understanding of the experience and implies the use of other senses than visual.