thesis on autism architecture

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List

• PMC9326241.1 ; 2021 Oct 26
• ➤ PMC9326241.2; 2022 Jul 25

Autism spectrum disorder in architecture perspective: a review of the literature and bibliometric assessment of research indexed in Web of Science

Reham moniem ali.

1 Interior Design Department, College of Design, Imam Abdulrahman bin Faisal University, Saudi Arabia, Eastern Province, PO. 1982, Saudi Arabia

Hala A. El-Wakeel

Deema faisal al-saleh, mai ibrahim shukri, khadeeja m n ansari, associated data, underlying data.

Zenodo: Underlying data for 'autism spectrum disorder in architecture perspective: A review of the literature and bibliometric assessment of research indexed in Web of Science'. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5080242

Data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC-BY 4.0).

Version Changes

Revised. amendments from version 1.

The authors have conducted a more in-depth study by going through title by title, abstract, and keywords to identify the relevant papers in terms of architectural design and built environment perspective and added three more columns to the table no. 1 for the number of papers in architectural and in design in general with the total number of citations. This addition made a significant difference in version 2 of the paper from version 1.  Moreover, the authors have implemented the suggestions given by reviewers, in terms of extending the literature review by adding previous scientometric studies done on ASD research. The researchers have suggested a few emerging areas of the study and highlighted a few emerging and important keywords which were found missing. Overall, the study has been improved now with more extensive research output.

Peer Review Summary

An increasing number of scholarly publications on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have urged researcher interest in this topic; however, there is still a lack of quantitative analysis. Therefore, this study aims to cover the knowledge gap between the amount of literature published on ASD research on architectural and designers' perspectives compared to the medical and psychological fields. The study has analyzed global research output on ASD from a designer's perspective to recognize this gap related to designing the physical environment. 

Methodology:

The bibliometric method was employed to analyze the published literature from 1992–to 2021. 812 papers were downloaded from the Web of Science for analysis based on annual growth of literature, prolific authors, authorship pattern, organizations, countries, international collaboration, and subject development by keywords and thematic map analyses. Various bibliometric and scientometric software was used to analyze the data, namely Bibexcel, Biblioshiny, and VOS viewer.

The812 research papers were published in 405 sources. 2019 appeared as a productive year (NP=101), and 2014 received the highest number of citations (TC=6634). Researchers preferred to publish as journal articles (NP=538; TC=24922). The University of Toronto, Canada, was identified as a productive institution with 42 publications and 5358 citations. The USA was the leading producing country with 433 publications, and most of the researchers published in the journal " Scientific Reports " (NP=16). The word autism (NP=257) and architecture (NP=165) were more frequently used keywords.

Conclusion:

The study identified a massive gap in the development of literature in ASD for architecture design and built environment perspective, the most important and trending keywords are missing, and the analyses also showed a lack of subject development. The authors have suggested areas and keywords for further research to fulfill the gap in the future.

Background study of ASD

ASD is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects children from a young age. It is marked by functional impairment in social communication, limited interests, selective attention, repetitive habits, as well as hypersensitivity to touch, vision, taste, or sound in certain people ( Remington et al. , 2009 ). Autistic disorder, high-functioning autism (HFA), Asperger syndrome (AS), pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS), and atypical autism is all diagnostic terminology that has previously been employed. ASD is expected to affect one out of every 88 children in the United States, with one out of every 56 boys being affected. ( Taghizadeh et al. , 2015 ). The diagnosis rates for ASD have increased sharply worldwide in the last 40 years compared with other disabilities ( Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022 )

Pallasmaa (2005) , diagnosed with ASD, said: 'I confront the city with my body.' The interaction between a person and their environment produces many physical and mental challenges for ASD. Therefore, the built environment is an important factor that significantly influences individuals' behavior directly and indirectly. ASD children are a special case, which should be defined to help them access space and inhabit it. Two issues must be considered to understand the impact of the environment on the development of one's life ( Horne, 1997 ):

• 1-   The identification of the physical environment in its material and symbolic context.
• 2-   The impact of the environment on one's behavior and how people perceive themselves and their surroundings.

Autistic people have difficulties in processing the information from the physical environment through their senses, especially the influence of environmental stressors like noise and clutter, and they are forced to exert more effort to understand it. The difficulty in understanding provokes frustration and erratic behavior.

Theoretical models of autism

Many human-environment interaction research conducted by environmental psychologists have focused on the environment's psychological factors rather than the physical setting. This section will clarify the relationship between autism and the environment.

1- Human ecosystem (HES)

In 1992, Guerin defined the Human ecosystem (HES) theory model in a learning environment to understand autistic behavior. The variables in this progress are related to the specific model components:

• a.   HO, human organism: gender, age, number of children, and the level of diagnosing
• b.   DE, designed environment: control of entry and exit (safety/security); classroom configuration and adaptability to make changes; lighting (artificial light/daylight); acoustics/noise; thermal comfort (temperature, humidity, ventilation, i.e. indoor air quality); wayfinding; building; FF&E (furnishings, fixtures, and equipment) materials and finishes (color, pattern) ( Kopec, 2012 ; Martin & Guerin, 2010 ).
• c.   NE, natural environment: access to daylight and natural ventilation, as well as green space and/or water ( i.e . landscape elements).
• d.   SE, social environment: visual, auditory, and physical communication method, as well as communication and interaction among children and caregivers in the same physical area.

Some researchers regarding the Nature of autism are convinced that autism is a pandemic of modern culture, with environmental factors at the roots such as pollution; researchers found early-life exposure to air pollution may be a risk factor for autism. ( Naviaux, 2012 ).

2- Performance prediction model (PPM)

The performance prediction model (PPM) describes the transactions between the users and their physical environment through the behavior. Also, understand how the physical environment affects user variables by observing behavior. In addition, clarify the interaction between the three components to lead to universal design principles. Even though this model is not explicitly created for ASD children, the research can be applied to users with different personal characteristics or functional abilities. This model consists of three main components (user variables, behavior, and environment). The variables in this progress are related to these specific components:

• a.   User abilities: individual characteristics and functional abilities.
• b.   Task outcome: behavior and experiential.
• c.   Physical environment: physical characteristics, organization, and ambiance.
• d.   Universal design: equitable use, flexibility in use, simple and intuitive, perceptible information, tolerance for error, low physical effort, and size and space for approach and use.

This model is used as a guide for the designer in designing different types of the physical environment for different users because it helps to categorize the users according to their characteristics, which are:

• Cognitive abilities: include all complex mental function proses to make an action, for example, decision-making and planning ( ICF illustration library, 2021 )
• Social and communication: include all components of the communication process with others by using different devices and methods to deliver or perceive massages ( World Health Organization, 2017 )
• Sensory functions: includes touch, smell, visual, and hearing systems ( ICF illustration library, 2021 )
• Mobility: the ability to manage body movements such as changing body position or location, carrying objects, and performing physical activities ( ICF illustration library, 2021 )

The characteristics of autism are varied in intensity, degree, and amount and manifest differently from person to person and over time. The common characteristics associated with ASD are loosely based on the DSM-5, common features of ASD, and PMM on ASD.

• 1.   Cognitive abilities
• 2.   Social and communication interaction
• 3.   Sensory function
• 4.   Activity performance

There is limited research on how environments may affect behavior and be designed to meet the needs of those with ASD. Also, there is a lack of information on the experience of spaces and perceptions by people with autism. Only two research have been found namely 'MEDIATE – a responsive environment designed for children with autism ( Gumtau et al. , 2005 ) and 'Could light colour and source change mood in children with autism? ( Hernandez Rivera, 2020 ).

3- Theoretical underpinnings of design

Interior designers concentrate on the design of the interior environment with the requirements of the person who will inhabit the space as the driving force behind all design decisions. Human factors, lighting, occupant wellbeing and performance, post-occupancy evaluation, research, theories about the relationship between human behavior and the https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10108977/7/Hernandez%20Rivera_10108977_Thesis_redacted.pdf designed environment, and universal design are among the ten knowledge areas covered by the 'Human Environment Needs: Research and Application' (HEN) category.

Experts on ASD consider the first six years of school, from preschool to sixth grade, important in reaching children and laying the groundwork for lifelong learning and general wellbeing. Even when daily activities are meticulously organized, classrooms attended by children with ASD or other children are highly dynamic, unpredictable environments. Because of this instability, examining the architecture of classroom space in schools where children with ASD attend from preschool to sixth grade is difficult. However, the framework identified by ( Guerin, 1992 ), which recognized the interaction of the human organism (HO), the BTE, the natural environment (NE), and the behavioral environment (BHE).

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complicated neurological disorder that, until now, has been inscrutable. The population of individuals on the spectrum worldwide is increasing due to the increased awareness. As their numbers grow, professionals in many fields started studying their ASD cases to provide them with a better life ( Hauptman et al. , 2019 ). Individuals on the spectrum are part of a growing population usually ignored in design despite the current tendency to create designs that focus on persons with special needs. There are binding recommendations and laws on designing buildings that respect physical disabilities, and the field is rich in design applications for physical needs ( Sánchez et al. , 2011 ). By contrast, there is utter indifference toward the person with mental health disabilities, even with guidelines for inclusion of children with physical impairment are used and successful, the inclusion of children with mental disabilities lags much behind ( Bilbo et al. , 2015 ) in their research mentioned that "the environment plays a role in human behavior" that greatly influenced the practice of interior architects designing people centers design. ASD children have sensory processing difficulties, which create challenges in understanding the surrounding environment, thus affecting their behaviors negatively ( Sánchez et al. , 2011 ). The built environment can cause extra confusion, which negatively impacts children with ASD due to the challenging developmental disorder of the ASD. Architects and interior architects are responsible for providing an inclusive built environment to improve the quality of life, especially for people with special needs ( Kopec, 2012 ), yet it is still relatively unnoticed by architects and designers as it's still excluded from building codes or design guidelines. Environmental and behavioral research has profoundly influenced the practice of interior architecture as it's vital to explore the environmental design for autism.

A vast amount of literature has been published on autism in medical and psychological journals over the years. However, few studies from an architectural perspective have been published even though the role of the sensory environment in autistic behavior has been an issue of debate since Leo Kanner first defined the disorder in 1943 ( Kanner, 1943 ). Recently, architects have become interested in finding out about the relationship between environment and autistic behavior to provide a suitable environment and support wellbeing.

Few interior designers and architects have yet started to define codes and guidelines such as Autism Planning and Design Guidelines 1.0 by Knowlton School of Architecture (2018) as a design solution for ASD to build autism-friendly surroundings that support users with ASD and prepare them to face other environments. The designer's approach usually compares children with ASD and without through their behaviors to find the differences in their needs in the environment ( Delmolino & Harris, 2012 ). Environmental and behavioral research has profoundly influenced architecture, and there is a growing need and trend toward user-centered and evidence-based design research to create an environment where people with ASD can thrive.

Few scientometric studies have been done to cover the knowledge gap in the ASD research, in that the authors considered examining the topic generally, such as Ozgur & Balci (2022) . They found that 'studies on autism have increased significantly in recent years. While approximately 150 studies were published annually in the early 80s, around 6000 studies were published in 2020. In this study, 59653 publications were retrieved, 63.69% of which were journal articles. The remaining publications were reviews, meeting abstracts, editorial materials, proceedings papers, etc. The primary language was English (96.70%) for the retrieved articles. Other languages like Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, etc., were also encountered.

Sweileh et al. (2016) studied growth of ASD research from 2005 to 2014 and found a total of 18,490 articles were retrieved. The Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, with 48,416 citations and an average of 23.59 citations per article, was identified as the most prolific journal. The United States (US) (n = 8594; 46.48 %), the United Kingdom (n = 2430; 13.14 %) and Canada (n = 1077; 5.8 %) have been most productive countries. King's College London (UK) was found on the top of the list for producing literature and receiving citations. 50% of the highly cited articles were in molecular genetics, and the papers with more than 50 citations were published mainly by authors from USA, UK, and Canada.

The above general studies conclude that most literature is based on medical, biotechnology, and psychological perspectives. Most funding agencies are identified as medical institutions, and the US is the most contributing country to generating the literature. Most ASD research in article form and double and triple authorship has more consideration. The citation rate shows an increase in the trend, and the growth in ASD research literature in terms of medical and psychological are noted as a steady increase and are higher in this decade.

However, the development of ASD literature in the architectural field has not been found. Therefore, based on the scientometric analysis, the present study considers estimating and identifying the gaps in the available literature on ASD from the architectural perspective compared to the literature available from the other perspectives, such as medical and psychological.

Research questions

• 1) What are the annual research trends and types of ASD research based on architectural design perspectives from 1992–to 2021?
• 2) Which authors are the most prolific, and what is the authorship trend in autism research?
• 4) What are the most relevant journals in journals in autism?
• 5) What are the most important organizations and countries in autism?
• 6) What are the most used keywords of autism in the field of architecture?
• 7) What are the most global collaborative countries producing scientific literature on autism?
• 8) What were the most cited documents and cited references in autism?
• 9) What are the most influential funding agencies?

Research methodology

Statistical techniques are used to analyze different types of publications such as books, conferences, journal articles, etc ., known as bibliometrics. Scientometrics is the sub-field of bibliometrics that studies quantitative means of investigation, scholarly publishing practices, publishing trends, trend topics, etc . This study, therefore, applies the scientometric method to ASD in the architecture field to estimate the literature gap. The required literature on autism was retrieved from the Web of Science (as of 4 th June 2021). The following search query involved in the Web of Science database ( Clarivate Analytics, 2020 )

• • TOPIC: "autism"
• • Refined by: TOPIC: "architecture"
• • Further refined by language: English
• • Timespan: All years. Indexes: SCI-EXPANDED, SSCI, A&HCI, CPCI-S, CPCI-SSH, ESCI.

812 documents have been retrieved ( Figure 1 ) for final analysis during 1992–2021. All the research data was downloaded in BibTeX, Tab-Delimited (win), plain text, and analyzed with Microsoft Excel (RRID:SCR_016137; Google Sheets (RRID:SCR_017679) is an open access alternative) and Scientometric and bibliometrics tools, namely Bibexcel ( Persson et al. , 2009 ), Biblioshiny ( Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017 ), and VOSviewer ( van Eck & Waltman, 2010 ).

Results and discussion

From 1992 to 2021, 405 sources were contributed by 5088 authors with 812 papers in autism. Single authored documents were 61 papers; hence authors in autism produce more research in collaboration. The average number of years of publications is 5.74, the average number of citations per document 43.21, and the average number of citations per year per document 5.711. 36,654 references have been consulted to produce 812 research papers. The number of documents per author is 0.16, authors per document are 6.27, Co-authors per document is 8.16, and the collaboration index is 6.71.

Annual research growth and citation's structure in autism spectrum disorder during 1992–2021

The first research paper on autism was recorded in 1992 with 382 citations (no publication indexed in 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, and 2003), similar results reported by ( Kumar et al. , 2021 ). Though the research output gradually increases, but shallow up until 2012. The autism research increased markedly after 2013, noticeably more than 50 papers appeared every year after 2013. The year 2019 was the most successful in term of the number of the article (NP=101), followed by the year 2016 and 2017, in which the second highest number of research papers published, coincidently the year 2018 and 2020 have equal number published articles (NP=84) and the year 2021 have 35 papers with 19 citations. The highest number of citations received in 2014 (TC=6634) for 53 publications, followed by the year 2011 (TC=4078) for 31 papers and the year 2010 (TC=3108, TP=34) ( Table 1 ).

*NP=Number of Publications **TC=Total Number of Citations

The authors have scanned all these documents to pinpoint the exact number of research papers purely on architectural design perspective and found a quite low number also, some of it belongs to art and design, these numbers represent the actual gap in the literature, which authors intended to explore and found that gap is quite huge. See ( Table 1 ).

The first paper on ASD research based on a purely architectural design perspective was published in 2004 and then in 2008. These papers remain unrecognized since they didn't receive a single citation. After a gap of 5 years, another research published under the title "Autism and Architecture" by Segado VF and Segado TA in 2013 received 2 citations; then, in 2015, two research papers were published, again without citations. In 2016 three research papers were published, namely "Interaction Design in the Built Environment: Designing for the Universal User" with 2 citations, "Designed by the pupils, for the pupils: An autism-friendly school" with 7 citations, and "Autism-Friendly Architecture from the outside in and the inside out An explorative study based on autobiographies of autistic people" with 8 citations. In 2017 only one research published under the name "Toward an autism-friendly home environment" by Nagib W and Williams A received 11 citations. A single research in 2018 as, "Sensory Spaces: Sensory Learning - An experimental approach to educating future designers to design autism schools," by Love JS, published in ARCHNET-IJAR, received only 2 citations. Three research papers were published in 2019 under the title Quality of the built environment from the point of view of people with autism spectrum disorder", "The impact of color and light on children with autism in interior spaces from an architectural point of view," and "Studio teaching experiments- spatial transitioning for autism schools" begged 0, 1,1 citations respectively. During pandemic 2020, only one research was published and didn't receive citations, and in 2021 (continuing years) didn't notice any research. Therefore, only 16 ASD research papers were purely related to architectural design from 812 documents noted from 1992 to 2021, with as many as 11 citations. These number of documents and citations reveal that these research areas are not very popular amongst the researchers. Please refer to the recent growth in general ASD research ( Ozgur & Balci, 2022 ), as mentioned in the literature review.

Type of research papers

The journal articles (NP=537) were the most preferred form, which agrees with ( Rahaman et al. , 2021b ). The review found a second preferred form (NP=142), followed by proceedings papers (NP=71) and then meeting abstract (NP=17). Other documents were minor in the list, published only three papers each. On the other hand, the articles also received the highest number of total cations (24922), followed by review (TC=8916) ( Table 2 ). The research was purely based on an architectural perspective, mostly published as journal articles (13) and then as proceeding papers (3) out of 16. Please refer to ( Table 1 ) for the total number of pure architectural design research.

*NP=Number of Publication **TC=Total Number of Citations

Productive organization

It is evident that the top ten organizational productivity ranges between 25 to 42 publications ( Table 3 ). The University of Toronto is the leading organization in autism research (NP=42), followed by Vanderbilt University (NP=37), University of California, Los Angeles (NP=35), Yale University (NP=33), and Massachusetts General Hospital (NP=30). Harvard Medical School (NP=25) identified as the minor producer of research in the top ten list. Interestingly, most of the listed organization are in the USA (9 organizations), and one organization from Canada. Stanford University was the most cited organization (TC=6686) for 28 publications, followed by Yale University (TC=6059) for 33 research in autism.

Productive country

Moreover, it is found that the top eight countries produced over 50 research papers ( Table 4 ). Only two countries have over 100 articles on autism. The USA had outstanding research output in autism with 433 publications and 27124 citations, followed by the UK (118 publications, 7569 citations), Canada (79 publications, 6816 citations), China (72 publications, 3339 citations), and France (60 publications, 3304 citations). This result parallels the previous scientometric analyses on ASD research, which says that the USA is highly active in producing ASD literature.

The analyses reveal that half of the research in autism contributed by the USA that received the highest number of citations (TC=27124) for 433 publications, followed by the UK with 7569 citations with 118 publications, and Canada with 6816 citations and 79 publications. Australia managed minimum citation (TC=2048) in the list with 46 publications.

The relevant sources in ASD

All the top ten sources have more than 12 publications; coincidentally, six sources ( American Journal of Human Genetics, American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B-Neuropsychiatric Genetics, Biological Psychiatry, Molecular Autism, Molecular Psychiatry, Neuron ) produced 12 publications each. Scientific Reports (Nature Publishing Group) was considered the most relevant source with 14 publications and 203 citations, followed by Nature Neuroscience (Nature Publishing Group) with 14 publications and 1986 citations and Human Molecular Genetics and Plos One with 13 publications each and 1015 and 371 citations, respectively. The analysis reveals that most of the sources belongs to the Q1 category (eight sources), and two in Q2 category. The highest impact factor journal in the list was Nature Neuroscience (JIF=20.07), followed by Neuron (JIF=14.41) and Molecular Psychiatry (JIF=12.38) ( Table 5 ). These results also revealed the gap in the development of the ASD research literature in terms of architectural design perspective. The top ten journals are again from genetic, molecular biology, and biological psychiatry; this top ten listing lags the source in the areas of architecture or architectural design. Hence, the authors have further explored the sources in which the 16 research papers purely on architectural design have been published. They found very few but popular sources in the field, namely, Archnet-IJAR International Journal of Architectural Research, International Journal of Arts and Technology, Housing Studies, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, Journal of Intellectual Disability Research, Journal of Policy and Practice in Intellectual Disabilities, Advances in Human Factors, Sustainable Urban Planning, and Infrastructure.

*NP=Number of Publication **TC=Total Number of Citations ***JIF=Journal impact factor ****Q=Quartile

Prolific authors

This analysis reveals that the article range of authors varied between nine and 12. Five authors (Devlin B, Geschwind DH, Scherer SW, State MW, and Wang Y) emerged as the most prolific authors with 13 publications each, 4383, 3409, 3338, 3662, and 333 citations, respectively. Buxbaum JD (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) found as the second highest prolific author with 13 publications and 2970 citations, followed by Bourgeron T, Eichler EE, and Li Y with 11 publications and 2142, 1944, and 568 citations, respectively. Casanova MF (University of South Carolina School of Medicine) noted as the least contributed authors in the top ten list with nine publications and 361 citations. Devlin B (Mount Sinai School of Medicine) was the most cited author with 4383 citations for 13 publications, followed by Geschwind DH with 3409 citations for 13 publications, and Wang Y (Carnegie Mellon University) managed only 333 citations for 13 publications. The table also shows that the most prolific authors belong from the USA (7 authors), followed by Canada, France, and China. ( Table 6 ). It is also revealed that most of the authors belong to medicine and psychology; the authors from the field of architecture are missing from the top 10 list. There are 24 authors found contributing to ASD research in the field of architectural design, amongst them Tufvesson C; Tufvesson J, and Nagib W; Williams A contributing one paper and begged 11 citations, followed by Kinnaer M; Baumers S; Heylighen A (NP=1, TC=8), Mcallister K; Sloan S (NP=1, TC=7). The other authors with one paper received two citations are Segado Vazquez F; Segado Torres A; Dalton C; and Love JS. Shareef SS; Farivarsadri G received one citation for one paper, and the other nine authors didn't receive a citation.

The pattern of authorship

The Figure 2 illustrated the pattern of authorship in autism literature. It was clear from the figure that the authorship pattern ranged from single to two hundred and forty-seven. The analysis reveals that collaborative research is more prominent among the research of autism over the study period. The top six authorship patterns produced over 50 publications in the field. Three authorship patterns (NP=123) contributed a maximum article in autism, followed by two authorship (NP=120), four authorship (NP=93), five authorship (NP=79), single authorship (NP=61), and six authorship (NP=56). The authorship of 27, 36, 38, 39, 40, 42, 46, 56, 58, 65, 67, 73, 86, 88, 118, 125, 146, and 247 each contributed only single publications in autism. The results also showed that two authorship patterns received the highest number of citations (TC=4775), followed by five authorship (TC=3296) and Three authorship (TC=3071). Rahaman conducted a similar type of authorship pattern analysis ( Rahaman et al. , 2021a ).

Mapping co-occurrence of all keywords (author and indexed)

Figure 3 shows analysis of all keywords used in autism research from 1992–to 2021. The results showed that 3848 keywords appeared in autism research. To map the co-occurrence of all the keywords, minimum of 15 occurrences of keywords were considered for analysis. Out of 3848 keywords, only 79 keywords met the thresholds, and all 79 selected keywords are clustered in Figure 3 with 1737 links and total link strength (5557). The size of the ball indicates a strong network of keywords, with each color representing a distinct cluster.

Cluster 1 comprises 31 keywords (abnormalities, activation, adolescents, adults, architecture Asperger-syndrome, autism, autism spectrum disorder, autism spectrum disorders, behavior, brain, childhood, children, classification, connectivity, cortex, diagnostic interview, fMRI, functional connectivity, high-functioning autism, human cerebral-cortex, meta-analysis, networks, organization, patterns, pervasive developmental disorders, sleep, spectrum disorder, spectrum disorders, white-matter, and young-children).

Cluster 2 has 22 keywords (association, bipolar disorder, copy number variation, disorder, genes, genetic architecture, genetics, genome-wide association, heritability, identification, individuals, linkage, mutations, phenotype, prevalence, psychiatric-disorders, reveals, risk, schizophrenia, spectrum, susceptibility, and variants).

Cluster 3 includes 19 keywords (brain-development, copy number variants, copy-number variation, de-novo mutations, disease, disorders, epilepsy, evolution, expression, gene, intellectual disability, mechanisms, mental-retardation, network, neurodevelopmental disorders, neurons, prefrontal cortex, protein, and structural variation).

Cluster 4 has seven keywords (fragile x syndrome, fragile-x-syndrome, gene-expression, mental-retardation protein, mouse model, rett-syndrome, and synaptic plasticity).

The top ten keywords were autism (frequency=257), architecture (165), autism spectrum disorder (127), children (123), schizophrenia (92), autism spectrum disorders (91), de-novo mutations (86), Risk (73), brain (59) and expression (freq.=55) had weighty number of occurrence with strong total link strength.

Each cluster is based on the theme, which shows the various aspect of the subject and its development. The themes special for architecture or design or built environment are missing to track the development of the subject.

The authors have found a few trendy keywords are missing here, such as acoustics, acoustical control, spatial sequencing, escape spaces, compartmentalization, natural light, fluorescent light, snoezelen, sensory environment, multisensory, neutral sensory, hypersensitive, hyposensitive, sensory trigger, sensory zoning, stimulus level, overstimulating, transition, transition spaces, safety, audio, auditory, auditory processing, distraction, interactive, tactile, tactile sense, altered senses.

Thematic map by title

Figure 4 shows four alternative typologies of themes that can be visualized using a thematic map. The thematic parameter is considered the title selected for the field, the minimum number of words selected is 80, and Unigram is selected for the graph.

The basic theme: Autism spectrum which represented by cluster 1 (autism, spectrum, disorder, children, brain, network, functional, connectivity, based, analysis, sleep, neural, developmental, learning, networks, structural, reveals, system, approach, design, matter, review, robot, resting, control, developing and white).

The motor theme: architecture human in cluster 2 (architecture, human, gene, syndrome, social, development, cortical, protein, autistic, model, synaptic, fragile, neuronal, cognitive, ASD, altered, behavior, mental, mice, role, cortex, expression, function, visual, cell, mouse, processing, and activity.

Niche theme: genetic disorder placed in cluster 3 (disorders, genetic, variants, risk, schizophrenia, neurodevelopmental, genes, psychiatric, rare, common, de, genetics, novo, genomic, related, mutations, copy, disease, mechanisms, and sequencing).

Emerging or declining theme: study genome represented by cluster 4 (study, genome, association, wide and evidence).

Most cited research papers in autism

The top ten papers ( Table 7 ) have more than 300 citations, published between 2007 and2015. "Large-scale brain networks and psychopathology: a unifying triple network model" (2011) by Menon V, published in Trends Cogn Sci was the topmost cited paper (1425 citations) ( Menon, 2011 ), followed by "Synaptic, transcriptional and chromatin genes disrupted in autism" (2014) by De Rubeis S, appeared in " Nature " (1220 citations) ( De Rubeis et al. , 2014 ), "The contribution of de novo coding mutations to autism spectrum disorder" (2014) by Iossifov I, published in Nature (1118 citations) ( Iossifov et al. , 2014 ), "Mapping autism risk loci using genetic linkage and chromosomal rearrangements" (2007) by Szatmari (999 citations) ( Szatmari et al. , 2007 ). "Dendritic spine pathology in neuropsychiatric disorders" (2011) by Penzes (838 citations) ( Penzes et al. , 2011 ), and "A genome-wide scan for common alleles affecting risk for autism" was the least cited paper among the top ten (393 citations) ( Anney et al. , 2010 ). It was noticeable that half of the top ten cited papers were published by Nature Publishing Group. The article entitled "Synaptic, transcriptional and chromatin genes disrupted in autism" ( De Rubeis et al. , 2014 ) has the highest total citations per year (152.50).

*N/TC=Normalized total citation

The papers that are well received in architecture or architectural design are not listed here due to a lack of citations than the papers in the other fields; hence, the ASD research in the given fields is less prevalent. The most cited papers in the architectural field are: ' The building process as a tool towards an all-inclusive school. A Swedish example focusing on children with defined concentration difficulties such as ADHD, Autism, and Down's Syndrome (2009) and 'Toward an Autism-friendly home environment' (2017) received 11 citations each. ' Autism-friendly architecture from the outside in and the inside out: An explorative study based on autobiographies of Autistic people' (2016) received eight citations, and 'Designed by the pupils, for the pupils: An Autism-friendly school' (2016) got seven citations.

Most Cited references in autism research

Table 8 explained the most top ten cited references in autism research. It is clear from the table that all listed references received more than 50 citations. Article entitled "Insights into Autism Spectrum Disorder Genomic Architecture and Biology from 71 Risk Loci" (2015) by Sanders SJ, appeared in 'Neuron' was the most cited (TC=92) reference in autism research ( Sanders et al. , 2015 ), followed by an article named 'Synaptic, transcriptional and chromatin genes disrupted in autism (2014) by De Rubeis S with 91 citations ( De Rubeis et al. , 2014 ), 'and 'The contribution of de novo coding mutations to autism spectrum disorder' (2014) by Lossifov I with 91 citations and appeared in the journal Nature ( Iossifov et al. , 2014 ). The cited references 'De novo gene disruptions in children on the autistic spectrum (2012) by Iossifov I published in 'NEURON' was the most diminutive receiver of citation with 61 TC ( Iossifov et al. , 2012 ). However, the top ten listed references belong to the biotechnology, genetic architecture, and medicinal aspects; the gap identified here is the lack of ASD study on architectural in terms of designer perspective.

Highly influential funding agencies

There are only four funding agencies from the top 10 list which funded more than 100 research papers ( Table 9 ). National Institutes of Health renowned as leading funding agency (313 publications, 23087 citations), followed by the United States Department of Human Health Services (313 publications, 22759 citations), the National Institute of Mental Health (182 publications, 16164 citations), European Commission (111 publications, 8476 citations), and National Institute of Child Health Human Development (66 publications, 7927 citations). The Wellcome Trust appeared as the least influential funding agency among the top ten (36 publications, 3959 citations). The USA was dominant in the top ten list (six funding agencies), followed by the UK (three funding agencies) and one agency from the EU.

It is to be noted that all funding agencies belong to the health and medicine except one that is the 'UK Research Innovation,' which is a good sign for the researcher belonging to the field of innovation, architecture, design, and creativity to apply for a funded research/projects.

Country collaboration in autism

The most dominant country collaborations were the USA and United Kingdom (51 publications), followed by the USA and Canada (43 publications), the USA and China (38 publications), the USA and Italy (26 publications), and the USA and the Netherlands (26 publications). The USA with Sweden collaboration (19 publications) was listed at the bottom of the top ten list. It was interesting to show that the USA collaborated with nine countries (the UK, Canada, China, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Australia, and Sweden). The UK followed this with two countries (the USA and Canada). ( Figure 5 ).

This bibliometric study has been proposed to cover the knowledge gap between the amount of literature that has been published on autism in medical and psychological journals over the years and the published research with the architectural and design approach. However, no other bibliometric analysis has been done from 1992 to 2021 that comprehensively evaluates and summarizes the literature, progress, and future directions of this key sub-area of ASD research. The results are eye-opening since only 16 out of 812 papers retrieved are purely relevant to the architectural and designers' perspective. The other papers are medicine, psychology, biotechnology, ICT, computer software design, etc.

The keywords and thematic analyses identified the huge missing gap since all are too generic, therefore, the authors have identified a few missing keywords, which leads them to suggest that more ASD research needs to be done in terms of built environment characteristics, negative sensory experiences, and conducive design features.

The literature review indicated that the performance prediction model (PPM) needs more research since, for over 2 decades, only 2 projects (cited in literature review) focused on describing the transactions between the users and their physical environment through the behavior. It also suggested that designers need to work more in defining codes and guideline to build autism-friendly environment to support people with ASD. The top ten analyses of the country, institution and funding agencies show that the USA is highly active in producing ASD research. Stanford University is noted as the most cited organization might be due to its own program for Autism research, extending a good platform for the researchers in this field. The 'UK Research Innovation' is the only funding agency to provide opportunities to researchers in design and innovation.This research also leads researchers to discover the most influential publications, authors, and journals in this field.

Here are a few noteworthy emerging trends (the missing gap in this study) in ASD research where researchers in the field of architectural design and built environment can dwell in are; acoustical control, spatial sequencing, escape spaces, compartmentalization, snoezelen, sensory environment, sensory zoning, overstimulation, transition spaces, safety, auditory processing, tactile sense, altered senses .

Data availability

[version 2; peer review: 2 approved]

Funding Statement

The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work.

• Anney R, Klei L, Pinto D, et al.: A genome-wide scan for common alleles affecting risk for autism. Hum Mol Genet. 2010; 19 ( 20 ):4072–4082. 10.1093/hmg/ddq307 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Aria M, Cuccurullo C: bibliometrix : An R-tool for comprehensive science mapping analysis. J Informetr. 2017; 11 ( 4 ):959–975. 10.1016/j.joi.2017.08.007 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bilbo SD, Nevison CD, Parker W: A model for the induction of autism in the ecosystem of the human body: the anatomy of a modern pandemic? Microb Ecol Heal Dis. 2015; 26 :26253. 10.3402/mehd.v26.26253 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Data & Statistics on Autism Spectrum Disorder . Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).2022; [cited 2022 Jun 10]. Reference Source [ Google Scholar ]
• Clarivate Analytics: Web of Science. 2020. Reference Source [ Google Scholar ]
• Courchesne E, Pierce K, Schumann CM, et al.: Mapping Early Brain Development in Autism. Neuron. 2007; 56 ( 2 ):399–413. 10.1016/j.neuron.2007.10.016 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• De Rubeis S, He X, Goldberg AP, et al.: Synaptic, transcriptional and chromatin genes disrupted in autism. Nature. 2014; 515 ( 7526 ):209–215. 10.1038/nature13772 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Delmolino L, Harris SL: Matching Children on the Autism Spectrum to Classrooms: A Guide for Parents and Professionals. J Autism Dev Disord. 2012; 42 ( 6 ):1197–1204. 10.1007/s10803-011-1298-6 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Di Martino A, Yan CG, Li Q, et al.: The autism brain imaging data exchange: towards a large-scale evaluation of the intrinsic brain architecture in autism. Mol Psychiatry. 2014; 19 ( 6 ):659–667. 10.1038/mp.2013.78 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gaugler T, Klei L, Sanders SJ, et al.: Most genetic risk for autism resides with common variation. Nat Genet. 2014; 46 ( 8 ):881–885. 10.1038/ng.3039 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Guerin B: BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: A REVIEW OF LANA’S ASSUMPTIONS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY†. J Exp Anal Behav. 1992; 58 ( 3 ):589–604. 10.1901/jeab.1992.58-589 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gumtau S, Newland P, Creed C, et al.: MEDIATE - a responsive environment designed for children with autism . In: Accessible Design in the Digital World Conference .2005;1–8. 10.14236/ewic/AD2005.14 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hauptman M, Stierman B, Woolf AD: Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder and Lead Poisoning: Diagnostic Challenges and Management Complexities. Clin Pediatr (Phila). 2019; 58 ( 6 ):605–612. 10.1177/0009922819839237 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hernandez Rivera N: Could light colour and source change mood in children with autism? Doctoral thesis, UCL (University College London).2020. Reference Source [ Google Scholar ]
• Horne R: Representations of medication and treatment: Advances in theory and measurement. In: Perceptions of Health & Illness. London: Psychology Press,1997;520. Reference Source [ Google Scholar ]
• ICF illustration library: ICF illustration library .2021. Reference Source [ Google Scholar ]
• Iossifov I, O’Roak BJ, Sanders SJ, et al.: The contribution of de novo coding mutations to autism spectrum disorder. Nature. 2014; 515 ( 7526 ):216–221. 10.1038/nature13908 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Iossifov I, Ronemus M, Levy D, et al.: De novo gene disruptions in children on the autistic spectrum. Neuron. 2012; 74 ( 2 ):285–299. 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.04.009 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kanner L: Autistic disturbances of affective contact. Nervous Child. 1943; 2 :217–250. Reference Source [ Google Scholar ]
• Knowlton School of Architecture: Autism Planning and Design Guidelines 1.0 . The Ohio State University;2018;234. Reference Source [ Google Scholar ]
• Kopec DA: Environmental psychology for design. Fairchild Books. learning-therapy cluster.jpg.2012. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kumar S, Joshi M, Rahaman MS, et al.: Research Productivity on Human Migration in the Himalayan Region during 1947-2019: A Bibliometric Study. Library Philosophy and Practice (e-Journal). 2021;4909. Reference Source [ Google Scholar ]
• Marshall CR, Noor A, Vincent JB, et al.: Structural variation of chromosomes in autism spectrum disorder. Am J Hum Genet. 2008; 82 ( 2 ):477–488. 10.1016/j.ajhg.2007.12.009 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Martin CS, Guerin D: The interior design profession’s body of knowledge and its relationship to health: safety: and welfare. Council for Interior Design Accreditation.2010. Reference Source [ Google Scholar ]
• Menon V: Large-scale brain networks and psychopathology: a unifying triple network model. Trends Cogn Sci. 2011; 15 ( 10 ):483–506. 10.1016/j.tics.2011.08.003 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Naviaux R: ASD & Ecosystem . Autism Research institute.2012. Reference Source [ Google Scholar ]
• Neale BM, Kou Y, Liu L, et al.: Patterns and rates of exonic de novo mutations in autism spectrum disorders. Nature. 2012; 485 ( 7397 ):242–245. 10.1038/nature11011 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• O’Roak BJ, Vives L, Girirajan S, et al.: Sporadic autism exomes reveal a highly interconnected protein network of de novo mutations. Nature. 2012; 485 ( 7397 ):246–250. 10.1038/nature10989 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ozgur EG, Balci S: The Evolution of Autism: A Bibliometric Analysis. Acta Medica Nicomedia. 2022; 5 ( 1 ):1–7. Reference Source [ Google Scholar ]
• Pallasmaa J: The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses . John Wiley & Sons.2005. Reference Source [ Google Scholar ]
• Penzes P, Cahill ME, Jones KA, et al.: Dendritic spine pathology in neuropsychiatric disorders. Nat Neurosci. 2011; 14 ( 3 ):285–293. 10.1038/nn.2741 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Persson O, Danell R, Schneider JW: How to use Bibexcel for various types of bibliometric analysis . In: Celebrating scholarly communication studies: A Festschrift for Olle Persson at his 60th Birthday . ed. F Åström, R Danell, B Larsen, J Schneider. International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics.2009. Reference Source [ Google Scholar ]
• Pinto D, Pagnamenta AT, Klei L, et al.: Functional impact of global rare copy number variation in autism spectrum disorders. Nature. 2010; 466 ( 7304 ):368–372. 10.1038/nature09146 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rahaman MS, Abdel Magid IM, Ahmad S, et al.: Scientometric Profile of the Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University : A leading University of Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia. Libr philos pract. 2021a;1–23. Reference Source [ Google Scholar ]
• Rahaman MS, Kumar S, Ansari KMN, et al.: Twenty-five years of global research publications trends of novel coronavirus: A scientometrics assessment. Libr philos pract. 2021b;1–17. Reference Source [ Google Scholar ]
• Remington A, Swettenham J, Campbell R, et al.: Selective Attention and Perceptual Load in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Psychol Sci. 2009; 20 ( 11 ):1388–93. 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02454.x [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sánchez PA, Vázquez FS, Serrano LA: Tourism and the Built Environment. Architectural Tourism. 2011;7–56. 10.1007/978-3-658-06024-4_2 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sanders SJ, He X, Willsey AJ, et al.: Insights into Autism Spectrum Disorder Genomic Architecture and Biology from 71 Risk Loci. Neuron. 2015; 87 ( 6 ):1215–1233. 10.1016/j.neuron.2015.09.016 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sanders SJ, Murtha MT, Gupta AR, et al.: De novo mutations revealed by whole-exome sequencing are strongly associated with autism. Nature. 2012; 485 ( 7397 ):237–241. 10.1038/nature10945 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sebat J, Lakshmi B, Malhotra D, et al.: Strong association of de novo copy number mutations with autism. Science (New York, N.Y.). 2007; 316 ( 5823 ):445–449. 10.1126/science.1138659 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sweileh WM, Al-Jabi SW, Sawalha AF, et al.: Bibliometric profile of the global scientific research on autism spectrum disorders. Springerplus. 2016; 5 ( 1 ):1480. 10.1186/s40064-016-3165-6 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Szatmari P, Paterson AD, Zwaigenbaum L, et al.: Mapping autism risk loci using genetic linkage and chromosomal rearrangements. Nature Genetics. 2007; 39 ( 3 ):319–328. 10.1038/ng1985 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Taghizadeh N, Davidson A, Williams K, et al.: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and its perioperative management. Paediatr Anaesth. 2015; 25 ( 11 ):1076–1084. 10.1111/pan.12732 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• van Eck NJ, Waltman L: Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping. Scientometrics. 2010; 84 ( 2 ):523–538. 10.1007/s11192-009-0146-3 [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• World Health Organization: WHO Strategic Communications Framework . World Health Organization,2017;56. Reference Source [ Google Scholar ]

Reviewer response for version 2

Peter kokol.

1 Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia

Authors answered to my comments, and I would like to approve the article.

Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?

If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?

Not applicable

Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?

Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?

Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?

Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?

Reviewer Expertise:

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.

Reviewer response for version 1

Hashem hussein al-attas.

1 Deanship of Library Affairs, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

The authors have collected an exclusive dataset from Web of Science using quantitative methodology. The bibliometric method to map the global research publication on autism spectrum disorder in architecture perspective, definitely contributes to the field and other researchers. It can help them decide the most productive country, journals, organization, pattern of authorship, most important author keywords, research themes, and new international collaboration. The analyses, results, and interpretation display interesting and beneficial data. Moreover, quality of the text is good. There are a few unnecessary capitalizations in the sentences, but ignorable. Overall the paper represents valuable information regarding autism spectrum disorder in architecture research.

I have enough knowledge in the field of bibliometric and scientometric studies.

The authors performed an interesting bibliometric study. They focused mainly on quantitative aspects of the research on autism-related architectural design. However, the paper should be amended in some aspects to make it more informative for readers and to make the study repeatable.

First, the introduction and the literature review should be extended with a description of bibliometrics, evidence of its successful use (and the reason why they selected bibliometrics as a knowledge synthesis method), the bibliometrics tools used should be shortly described and their use in the study stated more clearly. There are already some bibliometrics studies on autism and other disabilities already published, authors should point to them in the literature review and connect their research to already performed studies (they should also compare their results to results of similar studies in the discussion section).

• In the results section, they should point out which bibliometric tool was used to produce them. The results should also be extended with qualitative aspects, actually, the discussion is mostly missing. What is the meaning of the results, who can use them, and for what purpose. In the conclusion, authors mention that research gaps, research directions could be derived from their results, but the readers could benefit much more if the authors themselves will reveal hot topics, gaps, directions, etc. Authors should describe revealed clusters from keywords analysis in more detail. They should use thematic or content analysis to name and describe clusters, point to relevant literature, etc.

Computer science, bibliometrics, machine learning, health informatics

I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to state that I do not consider it to be of an acceptable scientific standard, for reasons outlined above.

Deema Al-Saleh

Imam Abdulrahman bin Faisal University , Saudi Arabia

• Comment of reviewer: The authors performed an interesting bibliometric study. They focused mainly on quantitative aspects of the research on autism-related architectural design. However, the paper should be amended in some aspects to make it more informative for readers and to make the study repeatable.

Authors Response : Done, the authors have worked more on the dataset and amended the annual literature growth table 1 to compare the literature growth in general with literature growth from the architectural and designers' perspective.

• Comment of reviewer: First, the introduction and the literature review should be extended with a description of bibliometrics, evidence of its successful use (and the reason why they selected bibliometrics as a knowledge synthesis method), the bibliometrics tools used should be shortly described and their use in the study stated more clearly. There are already some bibliometrics studies on autism and other disabilities already published, authors should point to them in the literature review and connect their research to already performed studies (they should also compare their results to results of similar studies in the discussion section).

Authors Response : Done, the introduction and the literature review have been extended and previous bibliometric studies included and compared the results.

Authors Response : Done, all the issues raised have been addressed.

•   DalSpace Home
• Faculty of Graduate Studies Online Theses

A Day in the Life: Live/Work Architecture Utilizing Autism-Based Inclusive Design

• Inclusive Design
• Autism Spectrum Disorder
• Normalization
• Architecture
• Yarmouth Nova Scotia

Collections

•   ResearchWorks Home
• Dissertations and Theses
• Architecture

Cognition in Architecture: A Residential Design Prototype for the Autistic User

Collections

• Architecture [512]

• DOI: 10.18848/2154-8587/CGP/v04i02/37413
• Corpus ID: 143045883

Architecture for Autism

• Magda Mostafa
• Published 3 March 2014
• Education, Psychology
• The international journal of the constructed environment

Figures from this paper

102 Citations

Architecture and students with autism: exploring strategies for their inclusion in society mainstream, the sensorially and socially adapted architecture: an analysis of the environment and its impact on the learning of students with (tea), spaces matters: classroom acoustics and repetitive behaviors in preschool children with autism, developing a framework of sensory environment for autism centre, the effects of sensory design on autistic children.

• Highly Influenced

DESIGNING FOR AUTISM: AN ASPECTSS™ POST-OCCUPANCY EVALUATION OF LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Built environment design and people with autism spectrum disorder (asd): a scoping review, architecture for children with autism spectrum disorder and their therapists, the impact of aspectss-based design intervention in autism school design: a case study, prioritising public spaces architectural strategies for autistic users, 26 references, an architecture for autism: concepts of design intervention for the autistic user.

• Highly Influential

Interventions to Facilitate Auditory, Visual, and Motor Integration in Autism: A Review of the Evidence

Sensory-perceptual abnormalities in autism: a case for more research, sensory correlations in autism, thinking in pictures: and other reports from my life with autism, design guidelines of a therapeutic garden for autistic children, architecture form, space and order, related papers.

Showing 1 through 3 of 0 Related Papers

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

An architecture for autism: Concepts of design intervention for the autistic user

2008, ArchNet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural …

Page 1. AN ARCHITECTURE FOR AUTISM: CONCEPTS OF DESIGN INTERVENTION FOR THE AUTISTIC USER Magda Mostafa Archnet-IJAR, International Journal of Architectural Research Copyright © 2007 Archnet-IJAR, Volume 2 - Issue 1 - March 2008 - (189-211) 189 ...

Related Papers

International Journal of Architectural Research Archnet Ijar

Magda Mostafa

Archnet-IJAR : International Journal of Architectural Research

Joan S Love

Keywords: autism schools; sensory environment; design education; interior architecture; student experience. Abstract: Universities and design schools have a responsibility to ensure that the education of future designers enables design for special populations, in this case specifically children with autism. This paper presents a case study of an autism defined experimental teaching-led design project, within a first-year university Interior Architecture course, on which the author is a tutor. It draws on the author's extensive working knowledge of autism issues, incorporating mediation between SEN schools and design students, and employing research informed teaching. The project involves a new local free school for autism, at a temporary site. The experiment is designed to challenge students, emphasising the importance of understanding how primary research, accessed directly from the end users, informs progressive design thinking. It attempts to influence their design work in subsequent years at university and in practice, and facilitate bridging the gap between academic research and real-life application. This paper seeks to identify how an autism defined project, focussed on student-centred learning and encompassing choosing sessions with children with ASD, can be taught in the first year of undergraduate study. Further, it aims to analyse how the teaching styles and content of a partially 'live' community design project impact on the participants. This is achieved by describing the details and challenges of the project together with the interactions between the students and the school. It concludes that the project adds value to the student experience, builds student confidence and eliminates preconceived ideas surrounding autism. It shows that design can be an interactive process between university and special schools. Equally, the pitfalls of a live project of this nature are highlighted, as is the need for modification before similar projects are reproducible as viable educational models.

Andrei Pomana

LUMEN TCA 2014 Conference 21-22 November 2014, Targoviste (http://conferinta.info/) As autism is becoming a more severe issue for society since its discovery in the mid ‘40s1, the scientific community is on an endless quest for answers. Although sensory sensitiveness for people with autism is still a debate among specialists, more and more studies show the link between the major autistic disabilities and perception.2 As the theory begins to gain ground, it also begins to receive interest from the architecture community. Since architects are held responsible for creating environments, a few theories have emerged regarding architecture for people with autism. In accordance with treatment plans, two major design approaches have been created, both based on the perception issues of people with autism, and also possessing features almost opposite to one another. While Sensory Design Approach focuses on creating a controlled sensory environment that makes autistic people feel comfortable, therefore facilitating skill acquirement, the Neuro-Typical Approach is centered on direct integration to different typical urban and public situations. The paper concentrates on the analysis of both design methods and examines which of the two would give the best results in the long term. This means that the main purpose should be integration into society and the ability of people with autism to lead an independent life. Also, the study represents a research for an architectural, urban, social and educational program that preceded an experimental architectural model that best suites the conditions and needs of people with autism. [1] Frith, Uta (2003) - Autism: Explaining the Enigma 2nd edition, Oxford, (Blackwell). [2] Russo N, Foxe JJ, Brandwein AB, Altschuler T, Gomes H, Molholm S. (2010 Oct) - Multisensory processing in children with autism: high-density electrical mapping of auditory-somatosensory integration, Autism research

“ICAR 2015: Re[search] through architecture”, 26-27 March 2015

Autism is regarded as the most severe psychiatric syndrome of early childhood. Because the disease cannot be fully treated, the autistic child becomes the autistic adult, its condition depending on the severity of the syndrome and mostly on the treatment process. Since any person will spend about 75% of his life as an adult, the task of autism treatment is to prepare children to gain independence and to insure integration into society. As a result, people with autism need to be prepared at the earliest age to interact with other children and integrate into the public school system, which will determine a mental development similar to normal people. [1] By doing this, autistic and non-autistic will learn similar sets of skills which will later facilitate their integration. Also, because they will get in contact with autistic children at an early age, non-autistic people will have a clearer understanding of autism and therefore be able to easily integrate them in work and social activities later in life. [2] Present design methods for autism treatment centers concentrate either on skill development (Sensory Design Theory) [3] or rigid adaptation to day-to-day circumstances (Neuro-Typical Approach) [4] without paying much attention to future autism integration. The paper focuses on analysing architectural methods that should be implemented in autism treatment institutions in order to facilitate the transition between the therapy environment and public education circumstances. The study establishes the difference between integration and assimilation of people with autism and refines present design approaches in order to achieve a more efficient integration process. Also, the study aims to improve the design methods that are presently used in treatment facilities, in order to make a better connection with post-therapy situations by introducing variation of sensory stimulation in the therapy spaces as well as interaction spaces for autistic and non-autistic peers inside autism treatment centers. [1] Frith, Uta (2003) – Autism: Explaining the Enigma 2nd edition, Oxford, (Blackwell) [2] Russo N, Foxe JJ, Brandwein AB, Altschuler T, Gomes H, Molholm S. (2010 Oct) – Multisensory processing in children with autism: high-density electrical mapping of auditory-somatosensory integration, Autism Research Journal, International Society for Autism Research [3] Mostafa, M (2014) - ARCHITECTURE FOR AUTISM: Autism ASPECTS în School Design, International Journal of Architectural Research, Volume 8 [4] Henry, Christopher N. (2011 Nov) "Designing for Autism: The ‘Neuro-Typical’ Approach", ArchDaily

Zsofia Maurer

Diane Parham

Volkmar/Handbook

Nikos Salingaros

Abstract Pre-industrial architects inherently knew the effectual dimension of design through its materiality, detail, and form. Until now, the intellectual dichotomy of human thinking held that mind and body were separate entities, drawing a distinction between reasoned thought and feeling. The early Greek philosophers distinguished between these two realms. Theories on beauty, the human aesthetic impulse, and design were divided along the objective and subjective lines for centuries.

Subradeepak Rams

Ashraf M. Salama

Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research After 2 Years: 85 Contributions, 70 Scholars, 27 Countries.

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED PAPERS

Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research

Early Child Development and Care

Pamela Heaton , Francesca Happé

Support for Learning

Karim Hadjri , Keith McAllister

Basant Ahmed

IOSR Journals

Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy

Jill Ashburner

Australian Occupational Therapy Journal

Alex Woolner

Katie Greenfield , Danielle Ropar

AUBEA 2017: Australasian Universities Building Education Association Conference 2017

Temple Grandin

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders

Robyn Young , Manya Angley

Richard Leibbrandt

Sarina Goldstand

Antonia Hamilton

Elena Patten , Grace Baranek

Progress in neurobiology

Ryan Stevenson

Occupational Therapy International

iram batool

Iasir Journals

Psychological review

Johan Wagemans

Ildar Farkhatdinov

American Journal of Chinese Medicine

Louisa Silva , Roxanne Warren , Anita Cignolini , Sarojini Budden

Ralph Savarese

Journal of autism and developmental disorders

Maureen Geraghty

Bernard Golse , Laurence Vaivre-douret

International Journal of Psychological Studies

Akio Wakabayashi

Isabel Killoran , Dagmara Woronko

Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience

The Cerebellum

Leonard Koziol , Deborah Budding

Guy Rouleau

Sarah Schoen

Applied neuropsychology. Child

Leonard Koziol

Pediatric Research

Srikantan Nagarajan

jacob bjerre mikkelsen , Quentin Stevens

lucy miller

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Open Access is an initiative that aims to make scientific research freely available to all. To date our community has made over 100 million downloads. It’s based on principles of collaboration, unobstructed discovery, and, most importantly, scientific progression. As PhD students, we found it difficult to access the research we needed, so we decided to create a new Open Access publisher that levels the playing field for scientists across the world. How? By making research easy to access, and puts the academic needs of the researchers before the business interests of publishers.

We are a community of more than 103,000 authors and editors from 3,291 institutions spanning 160 countries, including Nobel Prize winners and some of the world’s most-cited researchers. Publishing on IntechOpen allows authors to earn citations and find new collaborators, meaning more people see your work not only from your own field of study, but from other related fields too.

Brief introduction to this section that descibes Open Access especially from an IntechOpen perspective

Want to get in touch? Contact our London head office or media team here

Our team is growing all the time, so we’re always on the lookout for smart people who want to help us reshape the world of scientific publishing.

Home > Books > Recent Advances in Autism Spectrum Disorders - Volume II

Autism and Architecture

Submitted: 11 July 2012 Published: 06 March 2013

DOI: 10.5772/53679

Cite this chapter

There are two ways to cite this chapter:

From the Edited Volume

Recent Advances in Autism Spectrum Disorders - Volume II

Edited by Michael Fitzgerald

To purchase hard copies of this book, please contact the representative in India: CBS Publishers & Distributors Pvt. Ltd. www.cbspd.com | [email protected]

Chapter metrics overview

3,428 Chapter Downloads

Impact of this chapter

Total Chapter Downloads on intechopen.com

Total Chapter Views on intechopen.com

Author Information

Francisco segado vázquez.

• Polytechnic University of Cartagena, Spain

Alejandra Segado Torres

• Faculty of Medicine – Complutense University Madrid, Spain

*Address all correspondence to:

1. Introduction

"At the International Congress "Building, Dwelling, Thinking" held in 2001, Heiddeger concludes by highlighting the convenience and importance for the scientific architect to develop architecture by “building from living and thinking about dwelling".

Architecture has been defined in many ways throughout history, but its focus, its aim, its purpose, is dwelling. For this reason, Norberg-Schulz (1980 ) affirms that in order to research and understand an architectural space, it is necessary to understand existential space, that is, the concept of space that allows man to create a stable image of what surrounds him, at the same time allowing him to belong to a society and culture.

In an architect’s work, there is an underlying notion, which may be evident to a greater or lesser extent, that the built environment is a space that is to be lived in , inhabited, for it to be considered architecture. It is this existential experience of the space which gives it a sense of place and not a mere sense of the abstract.

Likewise, for many years, architecture has taken into account the existence of people with different types and degrees of disabilities (mainly visual, hearing and motor), and the architect has planned and designed, either in accordance with their convictions or purely down to legal guidelines, so that spaces can also be inhabited by these people. So, here we are talking about “accessibility”, which is a clearly (although not exclusively) physical concept: this is a matter of enabling disabled people to access buildings/spaces, which subsequently makes it possible for them to inhabit them.

However, there are other deficiencies or disabilities that are not so “visible”, and that are obviated in making a built environment “accessible”. According to Dianne Smith (2009 ), in the design process (of a building, of a street, of a town, of an interior space…) two paradigms intervene, almost exclusively: that of the client/property developer and that of the architect. That is, it is the visions that these two agents have of reality, of how things work and are perceived, which give shape to the building. This, moreover, on numerous occasions, with the prior assumption that said environment is to be practically limited to being a container or backdrop for certain activities or functions.

Nonetheless, for people with certain cognitive and sensory deficiencies, etc., which are “less visible” , as Smith herself affirms, including people suffering from autism, this supposition regarding how spaces are to be perceived and inhabited is far from the truth: due to their deficits, they have to make an effort, sometimes an enormous one, to be able to assimilate and understand the environment surrounding them. In this struggle, due to the problems that they have in processing the information that they receive via their senses, many factors may imply a great barrier and, at certain times, may cause a “blockage” in their comprehension of the environment, which, at the same time, leads to frustration and strange behaviour in the eyes of a chance observer (gestures, verbal expression, movement…).

Therefore, the surroundings, the built environment, is a factor which notably affects (directly and in many other indirect ways) people with certain less visible deficiencies. As the architect John Jenkins states, with reference to the design of educational areas for autistic children, although it may be generalised to people of any age and to other types of buildings, “mainstream children are probably more ‘able to cope’ with badly designed spaces than an autistic child would be. So the responsibility to create a ‘good’ environment is brought into sharp relief.” (Quoted in Humphreys, 2008 , pg.41).

• The intention is not to assert that the characteristics are unique. Each person with autism shows symptoms in an almost unique manner. It is a matter of seeing the common characteristics, aspects and behaviour that are frequently apparent in people with autism.

2.1. General concept

Autism is one of the most fascinating disorders that medicine and psychology have had to face. Isolation or solitude is one of the most enigmatic characteristics of autism. In fact, when American psychiatrist Leo Kanner (1943 ) describes the autistic disorder for the first time, he points out that the pathognomic sign is the inability to relate to other people, which causes an “extreme autistic solitude” . In this first description, Kanner specifies a series of common characteristics in the children that he studied, which we can summarise below:

Inability to relate to other people, at least in a normal way

Extreme autistic solitude which apparently isolates the child from the outside world

Deficiencies in the language, which may include muteness, pronominal inversion, echolalia or an idiosyncratic way of speaking, among others

In some cases, an excellent literal memory

Preference for certain specific foods (from a very young age)

Fear of intense noises

The term used by Kanner is sameness, which could be interpreted as “similarity” or “monotony”, but none of these two words can completely describe the original meaning (situation in which there are no changes). This is often interpreted as “invariance in the environment” or “Kanner’s autism”

Scarce repertoire of spontaneous activities (like normal play)

Strange motor stereotypes, like spinning or swaying

Normal physical appearance

Appearance of the disorder in the first three years of life

2.2. Historical evolution of the consideration of autism

During the years prior to the appearance of Kanner and Asperger’s articles, as a consequence of the wide diffusion of psychoanalytical theories, and in spite of the fact that Kanner himself had suggested a biological deficiency, it was considered that autistic disorder had a psychodynamic aetiology, that is, that it had originated due to emotional causes, leading to the blame being laid on the parents (there was talk of cold mothers, unaffectionate fathers…). So, it was finally affirmed that the cause of autism was the parents’ wish for the child not to exist ( Bettelheim, 2001 ). The psychoanalytical therapies used tried to restore these alleged emotional wounds and reconstruct the supposedly broken affections. This type of psychodynamic treatment, in the opinion of many contemporary researchers, has not made many contributions. (for example JK Wing, 1968: Escobar Solano, Caravaca Cantabella, Herrerro Navarro and Verdejo Bolonio, s.d.).

From the mid 1960s until around the middle of the 1980s, autism has gone from being considered an emotional disorder to the opinion that it has a neurological origin, finally being treated as a cognitive disruption, rather than affective (Escobar Solano et al., s.d.). Methodical and rigorous research began on autism, to try to understand alterations in communication and language, as well as in social relationships, resistance to change, etc (for example, Rutter and Schopler, 1984 ; L. Wing and Gould, 1979 ).

Which would correspond with the so-called “classic autism” or “Kanner’s autism”

This is known as “Wing’s triad” (L. Wing and Gould, 1979)

3. Design criteria

We will go on to present, fleetingly and not in great depth, some aspects of people with ASD to whom a solution can be given using architectural project and design mechanisms. We will group them, in order to make their presentation more systematic, according to the different areas that may be affected in said people.

3.1. Imagination

Resistance to change and a limited capacity of imagination are one of the essential characteristics of autistic spectrum, and these are reflected in aspects such as difficulty or extreme nervousness when changing activity, and even when moving from one space to another (because people with ASD are incapable of “imagining”, in the sense of creating a mental image of what there might be at the other side of a door or wall, for example). From an educational point of view (and even in family life) this aspect is faced by “anticipating” the activities that are going to be carried out next, and avoiding or lessening, as far as possible, unexpected changes in the planned routines.

From the point of view of an architectural project, the inability to construct a mental image of the environment, as well as to integrate parts into a whole, may be faced by looking for a clear structure in the building, as well as by providing elements that give it a certain order and unity, in such a way that the building can be easily read, predictable, imaginable . Referring to the transition between spaces, the anxiety suffered by people with ASD can be reduced for example, by using colours on the doors (depending on the spaces behind them), as well as pictographs and photographs which “advance” what we are going to find, or by creating transitional environments in between, where the change of space can be anticipated.

3.2. Communication

Difficulties in verbal and non-verbal communication, together with difficulties processing information, make it necessary to “remove certain psychological “barriers” and adapt the environment with codes which […] are characterised by being specific and easily perceivable (as opposed to subtle), simple, that is, containing few elements (as opposed to complex) and permanent (as opposed to temporary)” ( Tamarit, De Dios, Domínguez, and Escribano, 1990 ).

The person with ASD needs visual support for communicating and pictographs or photographs of objects, people, etc. are usually used. The built environment should be able to “welcome” these forms of communication, foreseeing their correct location and integration. Colour coding, for example, of different elements may also help to improve communication.

3.3. Social interaction

• Proxemics refers to the space that exists between people in different social interactions. Proximity may be perceived as a threat by a person with autism.

3.4. Sensory difficulties

In the case of ASD sufferers, it is also common for malfunctions to exist in the reception (or the processing) of stimuli, which is demonstrated by a visual, acoustic, vestibular or tactile (although also often related to smell or taste) hypersensitivity (or sometimes hyposensitivity). The proprioceptive sense is also altered at times. A consideration of this aspect should lead us to be careful when designing with colours (which do not clash excessively, are not too strong or too bright), textures or patterns, with acoustic properties in these spaces and the construction elements separating one from another, with lighting (soft lighting is recommended, preferably sunlight, and in all cases avoiding fluorescent strip lights, as the flickering and buzzing may upset a person with visual or auditory hypersensitivity),as well as with the fittings, etc. Another example of sensory alteration is a different perception of the sensation of pain, which may mean that a person with ASD could suffer serious burns on their hands, due to not moving them in time when water from a tap, for example, comes out at a very high temperature, or they may have a serious cut or injury and barely notice.

Multi-sensory stimulation rooms (“Snoezelen” rooms) allow people with ASD to adjust their sensory perceptions and also reduce anxiety at specific moments.

3.5. Behaviour and safety

Behavioural problems are also frequent in people with ASD, and may lead to aggressive conduct, meaning that the elements in the built environment have to be designed, chosen and implemented taking into account these potential bouts of aggression. Examples of these elements that are to be paid special attention to are bathroom fittings, electrical devices, metal door fittings, banisters and railings, exterior carpentry, tiles, etc.

4. Conclusion

It has been proven that existing scientific literature regarding built environments in relation to people with ASD and vice versa is scarce, and this is in spite of significant research activity carried out in relation with autism in recent years. This interest is due to the significant increase in the number of cases diagnosed, meaning that prevalence studies produce much greater ratios than the figures of 1 to 3 people in every 10,000 that were handled at the beginning of the 1990s and which were previously even lower. Recently it has been affirmed that there is one child with ASD in every 110 born (CDC – Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009). It is clear that the increase in numbers does not reflect (at least not exclusively) a real increase in the number of cases, but the expansion that the concept of autism has undergone, stretching to that of autistic spectrum, and to health care and education which allow for early diagnosis, with a greater awareness of the existence of the disorder ( Ahrentzen and Steele, 2009 ). In spite of this, figures reveal that it is a significant group of the population, which requires attention from society. In our area of discipline this should also be the case. In just a few years, architects have been made aware of how to draw up plans without the so-called “architectural barriers” that limit accessibility for people with a disability. However, under this concept of a barrier, we do not usually include those which limit the use of the built environment for people with cognitive or mental disabilities. As Baumers and Heylighten (2009, 2010 ) state, these people perceive space in a unique, different way, with the “mind’s eye”.

It is necessary to progress in research in this sense, analysing the architectural achievements designed and built for people with ASD, checking how suitable they are for the particular characteristics of this part of the population, even studying any defects they may have and verifying the new contributions that can be made in them.

It would also be interesting to encourage field studies with specific interventions in the built environment, even on a smaller scale, such as that of Magda Mostafa (2008 ), which allows us to extract results that can be checked and verified on how certain activities improve, and to what extent, the experience of the person with ASD in their built environment.

If, in general, the constant reflection upon the relationship between the person and space, between the individual and their environment (built), is important for the discipline of architecture, we believe that the particularisation of this reflection for the dweller with autism may be an interesting contribution for the discipline itself. In fact, researching about this adjustment and this link, between the architectural object and its aim - the person, is to reflect upon architecture itself, which, like other arts and other disciplines such as Philosophy, grows upon rethinking .

Finally, we will conclude with a quote from Luis Fernández-Galiano, which allows us to situate the role of the architect, especially in the case of people who are to be found “within the spectrum”:

“Dwelling is a difficult job. Like the profession of living, that of dwelling requires continual learning and attention, demands meticulous, systematic effort, and claims an immeasurable investment of time and energy. The nature with which the majority of people manage to carry out the complicated rituals of the dwelling space is surprising. Just as happens in the case of language, expertise in use is acquired along with habit, which provides guidelines and domesticates gestures and voices via daily reiteration of movement and words. So, this tiring and habitual profession has both an obstacle and an accomplice in the architect” (quoted in Oyarzun, 2005 )

• 1. Ahrentzen, S., and Steele, K.(2009). Advancing full spectrum housing. Phoenix, USA: Arizona Board of Regents.
• 2. American Psychiatry Association. (2002). DSM-IV-TR, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Masson, S.A.
• 3. Asperger, H. (1991). Autistic psychopathy in childhood. In U. Frith (Ed.), U. Frith (Trans.). Autism and Asperger syndrome (pg. 37). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• 4. Balbuena Rivera, F. (2007) Breve revision histórica del autismo (A brief historical review of autism). Revista de la Asociación Española de Neuropsiquiatría, 27(2), 61-81. (Spanish Neuropsychiatry Association).
• 5. Baron-Cohen., and Heylighen, A. (2009). The Eyes of the Mind. Architecture and Mental Disability. In Engaging Artefacts. Presented at the Nordic Design Research Conference – NORDES’09. Oslo.
• 6. Baumers, S., and Heylighen, A. (2010). Harnessing Different Dimensions of Space: The Built Environment in Auti-biographies. In P.Langdon, P.J. Clarkson, and P. Robinson (Eds.). Designing Inclusive Interactions: Inclusive Interactions Between People and Products in Their Contexts of Use (pg. 13 – 23).
• 7. Beaver, C. (2010). Autism-friendly environments. The autism file, (34), 82-82.
• 8. Bettelheim, B. (2001). The Empty Fortress: Infantile Autism and the Birth of the Self. (Spanish version) Saberes Cotidianos. Barcelona: Paidós.
• 9. CDC – Center for Disease Control and Prevention. (2009). Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, United States, 2006. MMWR, Surveillance Summaries, 58(SS-10), 1-20.
• 10. Escobar Solano, M., Caravaca Cantabella, M., Herrero Navarro, J., and Verdejo Bolonio, M. (s.d.) Necesidades educativas especiales del alumnado con trastornos del espectro autista. (Special educational needs of the pupil with autistic spectrum disorders) Pending publication.
• 11. Frith, U. (2006). Autism: Explaining the Enigma. (Spanish version). Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
• 12. Frith, U. and Happe, F. (1999). Theory of Mind and Self-Consciousness: What Is It Like To Be Autistic? Mind and Language, 14(1), 82-89.
• 13. Grandin, T. (1992). An inside view of autism. In E.Schopler and G.B. Mesibov (Eds.), High-functioning individuals with autism (pg. 105-126). New York: Plenum Press.
• 14. Heidigger, M. (2001). Lectures and articles. (Translation:E. Barjau). Barcelona: Ediciones del Serbal.
• 15. Humphreys, S. (2008). Architecture and Autism. Recovered from http://www.auctores.be/auctores_ bestanden/UDDA%2003102008%20S%20Humphreys.pdf
• 16. Kanner, L. (1943). Autistic disturbances of affective contact. Nervous child, 2(2), 217-230.
• 17. Khare, R., and Mullick, A. (2008). Educational spaces for children with autism; design development process. In CIB W 084 Proceedings, Building Comfortable and Liveable Environment for All (pg. 66-75). Atlanta, USA.
• 18. Khare, R., and Mullick, A. (2009). Incorporating the Behavioural Dimension in Designing Inclusive Learning Environment for Autism. International Journal of Architectural Research, 3(3), 45-64.
• 19. Lynch, K. (1998). The Image of the City. (Translation by E. Revol). Barcelona: Gustavo Gili.
• 20. Mostafa, M. (2008). An Architecture for Autism: Concepts of Design Intervention for the Autistic User. International Journal of Architectural Research, 2(1), 189-211.
• 21. Norberg-Schulz, C. (1980). Existence, Space & Architecture. (Translation by A. Margarit Durán) Barcelona: Blume.
• 22. Oyarzun, D. (2005). Arquitectura y discapacidad. Centro de atención integral para niños autistas. (Architecture and disability. Integral help centre for autistic children.) (Thesis).Santiago de Chile. Universidad de Chile.
• 23. Rutter, M. and Schopler, E. (Eds.). (1984). Autism: A Reappraisal of Concepts and Treatment. (Translation by A. López Lago.) Alhambra Universidad. Madrid: Alhambra.
• 24. Scott, I. (2009). Designing learning spaces for children on the autism spectrum. Good Autism Practice, 10(1), 36-51.
• 25. Smith, D. (2009). Spatial design as a facilitator for people with less visible impairments. Australasian Medical Journal, 1(13), 220-227.
• 26. Southerington, E.A. (2007), Specialized Environments: Perceptual Experience as Generator of Form (Master Project). Cincinnati, USA.
• 27. Tamarit, J., De Dios, J., Domínguez, S., and Escribano, L. (1990). Proyecto de Estructuración Ambiental en el aula de Niños Autistas. (Environment building project in the autistic child’s classroom). Madrid: Consejería de Educación de la Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid y Dirección General de Renovación Pedagógica del Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia. (Madrid Board of Education and Directorate for Pedagogical Renovation - Ministry for Education and Science.)
• 28. Vogel, C.L. (2008). Classroom design for living and learning with autism. Autism Asperger’s Digest.
• 29. Whitehurst, T. (2007). Evaluation of Features specific to an ASD Designed Living Accommodation. Sunfield Research Institute.
• 30. Wing, L. and Gould, J. (1979). Severe impairments of social interaction an associated abnormalities in children: epidemiology and classification. Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 9(1), 11-29.
• 31. Wing, L. (1998). The Autistic Spectrum: A Guide for Parents and Professionals. Saberes Cotidianos. Barcelona: Paidós.
• The term used by Kanner is sameness, which could be interpreted as “similarity” or “monotony”, but none of these two words can completely describe the original meaning (situation in which there are no changes). This is often interpreted as “invariance in the environment” or “Kanner’s autism”
• Which would correspond with the so-called “classic autism” or “Kanner’s autism”
• This is known as “Wing’s triad” (L. Wing and Gould, 1979)

© 2013 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Continue reading from the same book

Recent advances in autism spectrum disorders.

Published: 06 March 2013

By Penny Spikins

3856 downloads

By Karni-Vizer Nirit and Reiter Shunit

2817 downloads

By Eric Francisco, Oleg Favorov and Mark Tommerdahl

2019 downloads

Sarth Khare

Advanced Autism Research and Care Centre

Project type, undergraduate architecture thesis, case studies, project duration, secondary research, contextual interviews, affinity mapping, sustainability analysis, swot analysis.

This project demonstrated how the built environment can play a role in reducing the suffering and trauma of Autistic individuals. I designed an empathetic and sensitive threshold of spaces for the smooth transition of Autistic individuals from this safe sanctuary to vocational training and in-turn to the outside world.

Autism or Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a disorder of profound social disconnect rooted in early brain development. It refers to a range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviours, speech and nonverbal communication, as well as by unique strengths and differences. Symptoms can range from mild to very serious. It’s a big challenge before our society as most recent reviews tend to estimate a prevalence of 1–2 such cases per 1,000 of population.

Even I have a case of severe ASD in my family. The experience is very painful and traumatic. So this issue is very close to my heart and I want to do whatever I can, in my own capacity, to ameliorate the trauma of the artistic child and the family.

Project Area

S.a.s. nagar, punjab, india, building type, institution.

Designing for Autism

There is no known cure for this disorder. Emphasis is on safety, self-sufficiency, rehabilitation and on managing the triggers of excitement. Combination of strategies like treatment, therapies, education for cognitive development, skill training and positive calming environment are employed towards this end.

Through this thesis, I propose to explore as to how the built environment can assist comfortable living, growth and rehabilitation of autistic children and encourage them to participate in class and social interaction. This will be achieved through research on the built environment, autistic behavior and the role of natural light, color, smell, temperature and sound control to create a safe, interactive and engaging learning environment.

I believe that with empathetic and sensitive design, the built environment can play a significant role in reducing suffering and trauma of autistic children and help them in the path of growth and self-sufficiency

Establishing a Design Criterion

The first step of the exercise was to research certain Principles—elements that aid Austistic individuals in a built-environment and guide design of this research centre. 

There is a dearth of research on how an ideal built-environment can cater to the needs of people with ASD. Some controlled experiments have resulted in a number of design criteria compiled by architects around the world. I later used these as a basis for designing

I chose two local schools as Case Studies and also an international school for learning how spaces, elements and functions are distributed and if I could learn something from the problems that those buildings are currently facing.

Functional Diagrams

From Case Studies, Area Programs & Contextual Interviews I mapped the relationship of spaces and their tangible and intangible features to co-relate functions, spaces and scale.

Site, Massing & Concept

Building technologies and design, building technologies.

Primary Building Material - Compressed Stabilized Earth Blocks (CSEB)

Structural Elements - CSEB Composite Beams and Columns

Roof - Ferrocement Channel Roof

Green Technologies

. Water Conservation & Management - Low Cost Plumbing Fixtures, min.hardscapes & rain water harvesting

Solar Energy Utilization - Installation of PV Panels & Solar Assisted Water heating Systems

Energy Efficiency - Low Energy Consumption Lighting Fixtures, Lighting through Solar Energy Panels

Waster Management - Segregation of Waste and Organic Waste Water Management

The intervention spaces should be away from the access points due to heavy noises and acoustic stimulation.

The intervention spaces and the classroom should be oriented such that they do not get direct glare.

The administrative spaces should have direct access to the rest of the functions.

The entire circulation should be uninterrupted.

Clear areas of high stimulation and low stimulation should be provided in the building.

Greater emphasis should be given or community participation while securing spaces for individual escape.

The programs should be divided into the floors according to their level of sensory stimulation.

The standards for lighting and acoustic requirements need to be judged differently for the spaces used by ASD individuals.

Learnings 

Comments by the jury.

"A major part of your design has gone into following all the bye-laws of the building which makes it close to build-able. But this has led to compromises on many levels which interfere with the design concepts. During academics, the student shouldn't be overburdened with the practicality so that he may focus more on the design. Those are the things he would definitely learn in the office. It's good that the design shows innovative construction techniques. But only if you had excused the bye-laws and built the centre without such high restriction it would have been something entirely different!"

Thesis Jury, School of Planning and Architecture | May, 2017

Architecture for Autism: Overview and Analysis

Autism is a complicated spectrum disorder that involves consistent change of social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication. Autistic children face difficulty in communication and working with the world outside. The effects of autism show severe signs and symptoms in children. The first symptoms are revealed in children around two to three years old. But apart from this, few children present symptoms until they are a toddler. If symptoms are noticed earlier the better as you can aide it as soon as possible. You can have  digital therapy referrals that can assist you in your situation and help you out the best that they could. Give answers to your inquiries and right treatment for your child.

According to the CDC, one in 59 children is estimated to have autism. Therefore as a designer, we have a solid responsibility to design spaces for these specially-abled children.

The latest study revealed autism is more common in boys than in girls, and it is a lifelong condition connected to the child. Moreover, children diagnosed with autism syndrome can live life independently as every child deserves the best. Hence as a designer, it is our responsibility to make it possible. 

Need of Autism and Architecture

According to the latest report by CDC estimates that 2-5 children out of 1000 have symptoms of autism disorder. In addition to this, the numbers are increasing rapidly. In India, 1 in 88 are suffering from autism syndrome. The government only recognized the disorder in 2001, till the 1990s, there were reports that autism didn’t exist in India (dry Vinod Kumar Goyal TOI). These alarming rates of increase call for attention by all the fields, and clear architecture has been ignoring the effect of the built environment in their development. 

Such statistics are encouraging designers to look for specially-abled children. The increasing numbers tell us that as a designer we are responsible for designing the spaces for specially-abled users . It doesn’t matter if it is a mental or physical disability. Now the architecture industry has to come forward to design spaces for the specially-abled.

Classification of Autism Syndrome

Autism syndrome is common in children; when we are about to design spaces for them, it is important to know the types and classification of the condition. It helps in understanding the condition and encourages design for a user-end experience. The autism syndrome is classified as follows :

• Asperger Syndrome

Autism children who are diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome are very intelligent and can handle their daily activities. The autistic child might be very focused on topics of interest but will find it difficult to socialize with others.

• Pervasive developmental disorder

The pervasive developmental disorder is the next supreme level of Asperger’s syndrome. It might not appear like an autism disorder but has an extreme level of behavioral pattern.

• Autistic disorder

It has the same signs and symptoms as Asperger’s syndrome; the autistic child will find it difficult to interact with others and have slow learning skills.

• Childhood disintegrative disorder

Childhood disintegrative disorder is the rarest and severe part of the syndrome. It is a seizure disorder where an autistic child loses all social and mental skills during the first five years.

• Rett Syndrome

Rett Syndrome is associated with autism disorder, and experts group it under spectrum disorder. A genetic mutation causes it; therefore, it is not considered ASD. 

Therapy spaces for Autistic children

When designing for autistic-oriented users, we must look into their behavior patterns as a designer. Autistic children have different ways of communication, and therefore we must design spaces that help in easier communication with its user. The designer must add a sense of connection, and an architect must add calmness for specially-abled users. 

• Occupational therapy

Occupational therapy teaches a skill that helps the person live as independently as possible skills might include dressing, eating, bathing, and relating to people

• Sensory integration therapy

Sensory integration therapy helps the person deal with sensory information like sights, sounds, and smells. In addition to this, it helps autistic children who are not bothered by the sound.

• Speech therapy

Speech therapy has a vital role in improving the autistic child’s communication skills. In addition to this, it helps in the development of verbal communication skills. For others, using gestures or picture boards is more realistic

• The pictures exchange communication systems

Pecs uses picture symbols to teach communication skills. Autistic children communicate by using picture symbols for conversation. 

Awareness for Autistic oriented design

The study has stressed the importance of including students on the Autism spectrum in general education environments. This inclusion, that is, their integration and participation to attend the same classes with non-disabled students, would not be achieved without providing the necessary support. This support includes a quiet, distraction-free learning environment with sufficient personal space that would allow them to recalibrate and readjust their senses. 

That in addition to the high-interest areas that conform to these students’ statuses, and that would make their inclusion a The various strategies presented in this study reveal the importance of the role of architects in providing these inclusive environments that should guarantee equal opportunities for all society members and help mainstream students with autism into society social mainstream. 

• Raising the awareness of professional architects and designers of the importance of providing inclusive autism-friendly environments, especially educational ones, to prepare the members of this group for better community integration and a higher quality of life.
• It is important to teach the next generation of designers through adjusted curriculum and courses for a specially-abled design perspective.
• Raising community awareness of the importance of autism and architecture.

Case Study: Advanced Autism Center, Egypt 

There is no better way to study a typology of design than a case study. Advanced Autism Center Egypt is located in Cairo, Egypt. Ar Magda Mustafa designed it. Furthermore, Ar. Magda Mostafa designed the spaces for autistic children keeping their behavioral and design concepts in mind. Therefore the spaces are divided purposely into low, high, and transitional stimuli zones. The site is located in Cairo and is surrounded by township and katameta golf tennis. 

The internal spaces are divided as per sensory potential into three groups. The groups of design stimuli are low, high, and transitional spaces. The criteria of stimuli are used in escape space, translational spaces, and sensory zones. The center is placed on the west side of Cairo in a residential area. Low-rise buildings define the character of the area. 

Stimuli are defined as unusual reactions in the respective sensory organs. 

High Stimuli: Sensory information coming from a built environment might be a simple bright color. 

Low Stimuli: In the low stimulus environment project.

Transition space: The sensory garden is organized. Inspiring the different senses — sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. A garden with a play area for physical development. The two zones are connected by a long corridor that provides intimacy to the treatment. This area is the administration department and hydrotherapy. And these areas are under high stimuli.

Hydrotherapy: Inspiring the different senses, sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. Hydrotherapy can improve social behaviors, and it can aid sensory processing disorders in the central transition nucleus, providing easy access to all the treatment rooms. The structure is divided into four volumes of spaces and has a five-floor height massing. In addition to this, it has a sports center, public relations area, and hostel units.

Design perspective  

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex developmental condition involving persistent challenges in social interaction, speech, nonverbal communication, and restricted/repetitive behaviors. Studying the mindset of autistics in itself is a very vast subject; hence the topic limits itself to the study and research of their behavioral aspects in educational environments and environments which help them in rehabilitation. The main perspective of design should be defining quiet spaces, open circulations, and multi-sensory spaces.

The perspective of the design should be:

• To understand the environmental implication for teaching strategies used for children with autism in educational spaces.
• Address their needs and design accommodation based on their behavioral aspects, cultural and social aspects.
• Visual character, spatial sequencing, and it’s quality escape areas clutter-free space color texture materials acoustics. 

https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/42147

https://www.aaed.org/uncategorized/autism-and-architecture/

https://www.archnet.org/publications/9101

https://my.archdaily.com/us/@mark-p/folders/autism

Ar. Ritu Gosavi is a published co-author of the two anthology " A poet's Pulse" and "Slice of life" , graduated from College of Architecture Nasik .A brilliant content writer since 2019 bringing light on social and patriarchal norms through her writing page called "Ruminant". An architect, author, and audacious , a classical and japanese literature lover.

Rethinking Architecture Beyond Buildings

The Evolution of Materials in Architecture

Related posts.

Sungbo’s Eredo, Nigeria

Bhadra Fort, Ahmedabad

Baisakhi, Jaisalmer

Kopeshwar temple, Khidrapur

Shipping Container Skyscraper for Mumbai Slum by Ganti + Asociates (GA) Design

Gyan Museum, Jaipur

• Architectural Community
• Architectural Facts
• RTF Architectural Reviews
• Architectural styles
• City and Architecture
• Fun & Architecture
• History of Architecture
• Design Studio Portfolios
• Designing for typologies
• RTF Design Inspiration
• Architecture News
• Career Advice
• Case Studies
• Construction & Materials
• Covid and Architecture
• Interior Design
• Know Your Architects
• Landscape Architecture
• Materials & Construction
• Product Design
• RTF Fresh Perspectives
• Sustainable Architecture
• Top Architects
• Travel and Architecture
• Rethinking The Future Awards 2022
• RTF Awards 2021 | Results
• GADA 2021 | Results
• RTF Awards 2020 | Results
• ACD Awards 2020 | Results
• GADA 2019 | Results
• ACD Awards 2018 | Results
• GADA 2018 | Results
• RTF Awards 2017 | Results
• RTF Sustainability Awards 2017 | Results
• RTF Sustainability Awards 2016 | Results
• RTF Sustainability Awards 2015 | Results
• RTF Awards 2014 | Results
• RTF Architectural Visualization Competition 2020 – Results
• Architectural Photography Competition 2020 – Results
• Designer’s Days of Quarantine Contest – Results
• Urban Sketching Competition May 2020 – Results
• RTF Essay Writing Competition April 2020 – Results
• Architectural Photography Competition 2019 – Finalists
• The Ultimate Thesis Guide
• Introduction to Landscape Architecture
• Perfect Guide to Architecting Your Career
• How to Design Architecture Portfolio
• How to Design Streets
• Introduction to Urban Design
• Introduction to Product Design
• Complete Guide to Dissertation Writing
• Introduction to Skyscraper Design
• Educational
• Hospitality
• Institutional
• Office Buildings
• Public Building
• Residential
• Sports & Recreation
• Temporary Structure
• Commercial Interior Design
• Corporate Interior Design
• Healthcare Interior Design
• Hospitality Interior Design
• Residential Interior Design
• Sustainability
• Transportation
• Urban Design
• Host your Course with RTF
• Architectural Writing Training Programme | WFH
• Editorial Internship | In-office
• Graphic Design Internship
• Research Internship | WFH
• Research Internship | New Delhi
• RTF | About RTF
• Submit Your Story

Looking for Job/ Internship?

Rtf will connect you with right design studios.

Select Region or Brand

• Charleston, SC
• Columbia, SC
• Greenville, SC
• Pennsylvania
• Lehigh Valley, PA
• Long Island, NY
• Mecklenburg, NC
• New Orleans, LA
• Oklahoma City, OK
• Rochester, NY
• South Carolina
• Color Magazine
• Massachusetts
• North Carolina
• Rhode Island
• Milwaukee, WI
• Designers Today
• Furniture Today
• Gifts & Decorative Accessories
• Home Accents Today
• Home Furnishings News
• Home Textiles Today
• Manage Account

Upcoming Event

• Financial Leaders
• Leads & Data
• Classifieds
• Advertising & Marketing Tips
• Free Growth Guide
• Editorial and Special Products Calendar
• Event sponsorships
• Classified Advertising
• BTM Business Connect
• Movers & Shakers

Today’s Top Stories

• Special Report
• Digital Edition
• Banking & Finance
• Construction
• Government & Politics
• Health Care
• Manufacturing
• Real Estate & Construction
• Small Business
• Technology & Telecom
• Attorneys of the Year
• Best Companies to Work for in New York
• Charitable Events Calendar
• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Summit
• Elevating Women
• Excellence in Law
• Forty Under 40
• Health Care Heroes
• Icon Honors
• Leaders in Construction and Real Estate
• Reader Rankings
• Top Projects
• Veterans in Business

Virtual Panel Discussions

• Women of Excellence
• Women’s Leadership Summit
• Honoree databases
• Columns and Features
• Comment Policy
• Submit an Opinion
• Book of Lists
• Leads & data
• Plaques & Permissions
• Power Lists
• Special publications
• Subscription Premium
• Add to My Business
• Contact Leads & Data
• Submit a Mover
• Publicize Your Company
• Event Sponsorships
• Products Calendar

in.site: Architecture honored by AIA Rochester for Autism Nature Trail

Kevin Oklobzija // June 14, 2024 //

in.site: Architecture was named winner of the Grand Honor Award from AIA Rochester for the Autism Nature Trail in Letchworth State Park. (Photo courtesy of AIA Rochester)

in.site: Architecture received rare recognition from the Rochester chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA Rochester) when one of its recent projects was presented with the Grand Honor Award.

The Autism Nature Trail in Letchworth State Park provides a one-mile sensory journey in nature that can be enjoyed by all, especially special-needs visitors.

Headquartered in Perry with a satellite office in Geneva, in.site: Architecture brought to life with the Autism Nature Trail a vision of nature walk designed to serve those on the spectrum.

McDougall Communications sweeps Best of Show at PRism Awards

• Hiring event set for Friday at Boys & Girls Club of Rochester
• Mott says it’s business as usual for restaurants, event venues despite recent report

The firm also earned a Design Award for additions to an over 300-year-old house on Long Island titled buildingOUT.

The contest entry said “a growing family made room for modern living in a historic home by identifying key needs — and then kicked those out.”

MRB Group, along with William Rawn Associates, received a Design Award for Rochester Institute of Technology’s Student Hall for Exploration and Development (the SHED).

Together with Wallace Library, the SHED creates a unique learning ecosystem focused on hands-on learning.

AIA Rochester presented Merit Awards to:

» Stantec Architecture for Clute Park Redevelopment;

» Hanlon Architects for Arbor Midtown;

» CJS Architects for the Neighborhood of Play.

Edge Architecture was given a Citation Award for Lincoln Library renovation.

The Community Impact Award was given to PLAN Architectural Studio for 24 Jones Ave., a housing community used for alcohol and substance abuse rehabilitation. The award recognizes a project whose completion resulted in a notable positive impact on the surrounding community.

[email protected] /(585) 653-4020

Share this:

Share this!

Related Content

Constellation Brands re-hangs a familiar star in the Rochester skyline

Constellation Brands is readying to move its new headquarters downtown following the multimillion-dollar renov[...]

May 28, 2024

Rochester’s Center City Courtyard: From parking lot to 5-story affordable housing

The vision CSD Housing, LLC had for two barely used surface parking lots in downtown Rochester will become rea[...]

May 9, 2024

SWBR to host free virtual sustainability seminars

SWBR, a multidisciplinary architectural and engineering design firm, will host a week of free one-hour online [...]

April 2, 2024

CJS Architects receives top AIA Excelsior Award for Neighborhood of Play

CJS Architects has been named winner of the 2024 Excelsior Award for work on the Neighborhood of Play by the A[...]

March 29, 2024

New SWBR office included in COMIDA-approved incentives for Sibley Square

Development of space within Sibley Square for the new headquarters of SWBR and two other firms is expected to [...]

March 26, 2024

Errors by architects, planners cost Hampton Inn Rochester Downtown $5M, lawsuit alleges

Indus Hospitality Group alleges the Hampton Inn & Suites Rochester Downtown opened a year late because of defe[...]

March 14, 2024

RBJ Daily Newsletter

Sign up for your daily digest of Rochester News.

• By signing up you agree to our
• Privacy Policy

UR provost stepping down to return to teaching and research

Hiring event set for Friday at Boys & Girls Club of Rochester

Mott says it’s business as usual for restaurants, event venues despite recent report

Columns & Features

Enough about quiet quitting – People want meaningful work and th[...]

In the song “If I May Be So Bold,” Hayes Carll muses, “It’s no eternal mystery / You don’t need a hard-earned clue [...]

Caitlin Clark & the late Johnny Antonelli remind us about the powe[...]

Caitlin Clark’s trials and tribulations during her transition from college basketball super-duper star to up-and-down profe[...]

A legacy of giving: How to involve your family in philanthropy | Priva[...]

In a changing world where financial planning extends beyond personal wealth accumulation, more and more families are embracin[...]

Divest to reinvest in a better future | Environmental Business

Divestment has been in the news a lot recently, but the concept of divestment is nothing new.

What FTC’s Noncompete Ban Means for Businesses

AI for Business 2024

Employee Benefits 2024

Business Succession Planning 2024

Mental Health in the Workplace 2024

Senior & Elder Care Planning 2024

Privacy Overview

MSCD Pre-Thesis II

With the notion of “critical technical practice” as a touchstone, this graduate-level seminar draws from across design, media, and science and technology studies to cultivate an awareness of the discursive and political dimensions of technology in design, and to guide participants in the formulation of a graduate thesis in computational design.

A walk in a latent city. Mitchell Foo, 2022.

With the notion of “critical technical practice” as a touchstone, this graduate-level seminar draws from across design, media, and science and technology studies to cultivate an awareness of the discursive and political dimensions of technology in design, and to guide participants in the formulation of a graduate thesis in computational design. Through readings, discussions, written assignments and presentations, participants develop the skills to identify and refine a research question, situate it within a wider scholarly conversation — paying attention to ethical citational practices — argue for its relevance, and creatively engage with conceptual and methodological research challenges. As a final deliverable, participants produce a thesis proposal and present it to faculty and students.

A generative AI reset: Rewiring to turn potential into value in 2024

It’s time for a generative AI (gen AI) reset. The initial enthusiasm and flurry of activity in 2023 is giving way to second thoughts and recalibrations as companies realize that capturing gen AI’s enormous potential value is harder than expected .

With 2024 shaping up to be the year for gen AI to prove its value, companies should keep in mind the hard lessons learned with digital and AI transformations: competitive advantage comes from building organizational and technological capabilities to broadly innovate, deploy, and improve solutions at scale—in effect, rewiring the business  for distributed digital and AI innovation.

About QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey

QuantumBlack, McKinsey’s AI arm, helps companies transform using the power of technology, technical expertise, and industry experts. With thousands of practitioners at QuantumBlack (data engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, and software engineers) and McKinsey (industry and domain experts), we are working to solve the world’s most important AI challenges. QuantumBlack Labs is our center of technology development and client innovation, which has been driving cutting-edge advancements and developments in AI through locations across the globe.

Companies looking to score early wins with gen AI should move quickly. But those hoping that gen AI offers a shortcut past the tough—and necessary—organizational surgery are likely to meet with disappointing results. Launching pilots is (relatively) easy; getting pilots to scale and create meaningful value is hard because they require a broad set of changes to the way work actually gets done.

Let’s briefly look at what this has meant for one Pacific region telecommunications company. The company hired a chief data and AI officer with a mandate to “enable the organization to create value with data and AI.” The chief data and AI officer worked with the business to develop the strategic vision and implement the road map for the use cases. After a scan of domains (that is, customer journeys or functions) and use case opportunities across the enterprise, leadership prioritized the home-servicing/maintenance domain to pilot and then scale as part of a larger sequencing of initiatives. They targeted, in particular, the development of a gen AI tool to help dispatchers and service operators better predict the types of calls and parts needed when servicing homes.

Leadership put in place cross-functional product teams with shared objectives and incentives to build the gen AI tool. As part of an effort to upskill the entire enterprise to better work with data and gen AI tools, they also set up a data and AI academy, which the dispatchers and service operators enrolled in as part of their training. To provide the technology and data underpinnings for gen AI, the chief data and AI officer also selected a large language model (LLM) and cloud provider that could meet the needs of the domain as well as serve other parts of the enterprise. The chief data and AI officer also oversaw the implementation of a data architecture so that the clean and reliable data (including service histories and inventory databases) needed to build the gen AI tool could be delivered quickly and responsibly.

Creating value beyond the hype

Let’s deliver on the promise of technology from strategy to scale.

Our book Rewired: The McKinsey Guide to Outcompeting in the Age of Digital and AI (Wiley, June 2023) provides a detailed manual on the six capabilities needed to deliver the kind of broad change that harnesses digital and AI technology. In this article, we will explore how to extend each of those capabilities to implement a successful gen AI program at scale. While recognizing that these are still early days and that there is much more to learn, our experience has shown that breaking open the gen AI opportunity requires companies to rewire how they work in the following ways.

Figure out where gen AI copilots can give you a real competitive advantage

The broad excitement around gen AI and its relative ease of use has led to a burst of experimentation across organizations. Most of these initiatives, however, won’t generate a competitive advantage. One bank, for example, bought tens of thousands of GitHub Copilot licenses, but since it didn’t have a clear sense of how to work with the technology, progress was slow. Another unfocused effort we often see is when companies move to incorporate gen AI into their customer service capabilities. Customer service is a commodity capability, not part of the core business, for most companies. While gen AI might help with productivity in such cases, it won’t create a competitive advantage.

To create competitive advantage, companies should first understand the difference between being a “taker” (a user of available tools, often via APIs and subscription services), a “shaper” (an integrator of available models with proprietary data), and a “maker” (a builder of LLMs). For now, the maker approach is too expensive for most companies, so the sweet spot for businesses is implementing a taker model for productivity improvements while building shaper applications for competitive advantage.

Much of gen AI’s near-term value is closely tied to its ability to help people do their current jobs better. In this way, gen AI tools act as copilots that work side by side with an employee, creating an initial block of code that a developer can adapt, for example, or drafting a requisition order for a new part that a maintenance worker in the field can review and submit (see sidebar “Copilot examples across three generative AI archetypes”). This means companies should be focusing on where copilot technology can have the biggest impact on their priority programs.

Copilot examples across three generative AI archetypes

• “Taker” copilots help real estate customers sift through property options and find the most promising one, write code for a developer, and summarize investor transcripts.
• “Shaper” copilots provide recommendations to sales reps for upselling customers by connecting generative AI tools to customer relationship management systems, financial systems, and customer behavior histories; create virtual assistants to personalize treatments for patients; and recommend solutions for maintenance workers based on historical data.
• “Maker” copilots are foundation models that lab scientists at pharmaceutical companies can use to find and test new and better drugs more quickly.

Some industrial companies, for example, have identified maintenance as a critical domain for their business. Reviewing maintenance reports and spending time with workers on the front lines can help determine where a gen AI copilot could make a big difference, such as in identifying issues with equipment failures quickly and early on. A gen AI copilot can also help identify root causes of truck breakdowns and recommend resolutions much more quickly than usual, as well as act as an ongoing source for best practices or standard operating procedures.

The challenge with copilots is figuring out how to generate revenue from increased productivity. In the case of customer service centers, for example, companies can stop recruiting new agents and use attrition to potentially achieve real financial gains. Defining the plans for how to generate revenue from the increased productivity up front, therefore, is crucial to capturing the value.

McKinsey Live Event: Unlocking the full value of gen AI

Join our colleagues Jessica Lamb and Gayatri Shenai on April 8, as they discuss how companies can navigate the ever-changing world of gen AI.

Upskill the talent you have but be clear about the gen-AI-specific skills you need

By now, most companies have a decent understanding of the technical gen AI skills they need, such as model fine-tuning, vector database administration, prompt engineering, and context engineering. In many cases, these are skills that you can train your existing workforce to develop. Those with existing AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities have a strong head start. Data engineers, for example, can learn multimodal processing and vector database management, MLOps (ML operations) engineers can extend their skills to LLMOps (LLM operations), and data scientists can develop prompt engineering, bias detection, and fine-tuning skills.

A sample of new generative AI skills needed

The following are examples of new skills needed for the successful deployment of generative AI tools:

• data scientist:
• prompt engineering
• in-context learning
• bias detection
• pattern identification
• reinforcement learning from human feedback
• hyperparameter/large language model fine-tuning; transfer learning
• data engineer:
• data wrangling and data warehousing
• data pipeline construction
• multimodal processing
• vector database management

The learning process can take two to three months to get to a decent level of competence because of the complexities in learning what various LLMs can and can’t do and how best to use them. The coders need to gain experience building software, testing, and validating answers, for example. It took one financial-services company three months to train its best data scientists to a high level of competence. While courses and documentation are available—many LLM providers have boot camps for developers—we have found that the most effective way to build capabilities at scale is through apprenticeship, training people to then train others, and building communities of practitioners. Rotating experts through teams to train others, scheduling regular sessions for people to share learnings, and hosting biweekly documentation review sessions are practices that have proven successful in building communities of practitioners (see sidebar “A sample of new generative AI skills needed”).

It’s important to bear in mind that successful gen AI skills are about more than coding proficiency. Our experience in developing our own gen AI platform, Lilli , showed us that the best gen AI technical talent has design skills to uncover where to focus solutions, contextual understanding to ensure the most relevant and high-quality answers are generated, collaboration skills to work well with knowledge experts (to test and validate answers and develop an appropriate curation approach), strong forensic skills to figure out causes of breakdowns (is the issue the data, the interpretation of the user’s intent, the quality of metadata on embeddings, or something else?), and anticipation skills to conceive of and plan for possible outcomes and to put the right kind of tracking into their code. A pure coder who doesn’t intrinsically have these skills may not be as useful a team member.

While current upskilling is largely based on a “learn on the job” approach, we see a rapid market emerging for people who have learned these skills over the past year. That skill growth is moving quickly. GitHub reported that developers were working on gen AI projects “in big numbers,” and that 65,000 public gen AI projects were created on its platform in 2023—a jump of almost 250 percent over the previous year. If your company is just starting its gen AI journey, you could consider hiring two or three senior engineers who have built a gen AI shaper product for their companies. This could greatly accelerate your efforts.

Form a centralized team to establish standards that enable responsible scaling

To ensure that all parts of the business can scale gen AI capabilities, centralizing competencies is a natural first move. The critical focus for this central team will be to develop and put in place protocols and standards to support scale, ensuring that teams can access models while also minimizing risk and containing costs. The team’s work could include, for example, procuring models and prescribing ways to access them, developing standards for data readiness, setting up approved prompt libraries, and allocating resources.

While developing Lilli, our team had its mind on scale when it created an open plug-in architecture and setting standards for how APIs should function and be built.  They developed standardized tooling and infrastructure where teams could securely experiment and access a GPT LLM , a gateway with preapproved APIs that teams could access, and a self-serve developer portal. Our goal is that this approach, over time, can help shift “Lilli as a product” (that a handful of teams use to build specific solutions) to “Lilli as a platform” (that teams across the enterprise can access to build other products).

For teams developing gen AI solutions, squad composition will be similar to AI teams but with data engineers and data scientists with gen AI experience and more contributors from risk management, compliance, and legal functions. The general idea of staffing squads with resources that are federated from the different expertise areas will not change, but the skill composition of a gen-AI-intensive squad will.

Set up the technology architecture to scale

Building a gen AI model is often relatively straightforward, but making it fully operational at scale is a different matter entirely. We’ve seen engineers build a basic chatbot in a week, but releasing a stable, accurate, and compliant version that scales can take four months. That’s why, our experience shows, the actual model costs may be less than 10 to 15 percent of the total costs of the solution.

Building for scale doesn’t mean building a new technology architecture. But it does mean focusing on a few core decisions that simplify and speed up processes without breaking the bank. Three such decisions stand out:

• Focus on reusing your technology. Reusing code can increase the development speed of gen AI use cases by 30 to 50 percent. One good approach is simply creating a source for approved tools, code, and components. A financial-services company, for example, created a library of production-grade tools, which had been approved by both the security and legal teams, and made them available in a library for teams to use. More important is taking the time to identify and build those capabilities that are common across the most priority use cases. The same financial-services company, for example, identified three components that could be reused for more than 100 identified use cases. By building those first, they were able to generate a significant portion of the code base for all the identified use cases—essentially giving every application a big head start.
• Focus the architecture on enabling efficient connections between gen AI models and internal systems. For gen AI models to work effectively in the shaper archetype, they need access to a business’s data and applications. Advances in integration and orchestration frameworks have significantly reduced the effort required to make those connections. But laying out what those integrations are and how to enable them is critical to ensure these models work efficiently and to avoid the complexity that creates technical debt  (the “tax” a company pays in terms of time and resources needed to redress existing technology issues). Chief information officers and chief technology officers can define reference architectures and integration standards for their organizations. Key elements should include a model hub, which contains trained and approved models that can be provisioned on demand; standard APIs that act as bridges connecting gen AI models to applications or data; and context management and caching, which speed up processing by providing models with relevant information from enterprise data sources.
• Build up your testing and quality assurance capabilities. Our own experience building Lilli taught us to prioritize testing over development. Our team invested in not only developing testing protocols for each stage of development but also aligning the entire team so that, for example, it was clear who specifically needed to sign off on each stage of the process. This slowed down initial development but sped up the overall delivery pace and quality by cutting back on errors and the time needed to fix mistakes.

Ensure data quality and focus on unstructured data to fuel your models

The ability of a business to generate and scale value from gen AI models will depend on how well it takes advantage of its own data. As with technology, targeted upgrades to existing data architecture  are needed to maximize the future strategic benefits of gen AI:

• Be targeted in ramping up your data quality and data augmentation efforts. While data quality has always been an important issue, the scale and scope of data that gen AI models can use—especially unstructured data—has made this issue much more consequential. For this reason, it’s critical to get the data foundations right, from clarifying decision rights to defining clear data processes to establishing taxonomies so models can access the data they need. The companies that do this well tie their data quality and augmentation efforts to the specific AI/gen AI application and use case—you don’t need this data foundation to extend to every corner of the enterprise. This could mean, for example, developing a new data repository for all equipment specifications and reported issues to better support maintenance copilot applications.
• Understand what value is locked into your unstructured data. Most organizations have traditionally focused their data efforts on structured data (values that can be organized in tables, such as prices and features). But the real value from LLMs comes from their ability to work with unstructured data (for example, PowerPoint slides, videos, and text). Companies can map out which unstructured data sources are most valuable and establish metadata tagging standards so models can process the data and teams can find what they need (tagging is particularly important to help companies remove data from models as well, if necessary). Be creative in thinking about data opportunities. Some companies, for example, are interviewing senior employees as they retire and feeding that captured institutional knowledge into an LLM to help improve their copilot performance.
• Optimize to lower costs at scale. There is often as much as a tenfold difference between what companies pay for data and what they could be paying if they optimized their data infrastructure and underlying costs. This issue often stems from companies scaling their proofs of concept without optimizing their data approach. Two costs generally stand out. One is storage costs arising from companies uploading terabytes of data into the cloud and wanting that data available 24/7. In practice, companies rarely need more than 10 percent of their data to have that level of availability, and accessing the rest over a 24- or 48-hour period is a much cheaper option. The other costs relate to computation with models that require on-call access to thousands of processors to run. This is especially the case when companies are building their own models (the maker archetype) but also when they are using pretrained models and running them with their own data and use cases (the shaper archetype). Companies could take a close look at how they can optimize computation costs on cloud platforms—for instance, putting some models in a queue to run when processors aren’t being used (such as when Americans go to bed and consumption of computing services like Netflix decreases) is a much cheaper option.

Build trust and reusability to drive adoption and scale

Because many people have concerns about gen AI, the bar on explaining how these tools work is much higher than for most solutions. People who use the tools want to know how they work, not just what they do. So it’s important to invest extra time and money to build trust by ensuring model accuracy and making it easy to check answers.

One insurance company, for example, created a gen AI tool to help manage claims. As part of the tool, it listed all the guardrails that had been put in place, and for each answer provided a link to the sentence or page of the relevant policy documents. The company also used an LLM to generate many variations of the same question to ensure answer consistency. These steps, among others, were critical to helping end users build trust in the tool.

Part of the training for maintenance teams using a gen AI tool should be to help them understand the limitations of models and how best to get the right answers. That includes teaching workers strategies to get to the best answer as fast as possible by starting with broad questions then narrowing them down. This provides the model with more context, and it also helps remove any bias of the people who might think they know the answer already. Having model interfaces that look and feel the same as existing tools also helps users feel less pressured to learn something new each time a new application is introduced.

Getting to scale means that businesses will need to stop building one-off solutions that are hard to use for other similar use cases. One global energy and materials company, for example, has established ease of reuse as a key requirement for all gen AI models, and has found in early iterations that 50 to 60 percent of its components can be reused. This means setting standards for developing gen AI assets (for example, prompts and context) that can be easily reused for other cases.

While many of the risk issues relating to gen AI are evolutions of discussions that were already brewing—for instance, data privacy, security, bias risk, job displacement, and intellectual property protection—gen AI has greatly expanded that risk landscape. Just 21 percent of companies reporting AI adoption say they have established policies governing employees’ use of gen AI technologies.

Similarly, a set of tests for AI/gen AI solutions should be established to demonstrate that data privacy, debiasing, and intellectual property protection are respected. Some organizations, in fact, are proposing to release models accompanied with documentation that details their performance characteristics. Documenting your decisions and rationales can be particularly helpful in conversations with regulators.

In some ways, this article is premature—so much is changing that we’ll likely have a profoundly different understanding of gen AI and its capabilities in a year’s time. But the core truths of finding value and driving change will still apply. How well companies have learned those lessons may largely determine how successful they’ll be in capturing that value.

The authors wish to thank Michael Chui, Juan Couto, Ben Ellencweig, Josh Gartner, Bryce Hall, Holger Harreis, Phil Hudelson, Suzana Iacob, Sid Kamath, Neerav Kingsland, Kitti Lakner, Robert Levin, Matej Macak, Lapo Mori, Alex Peluffo, Aldo Rosales, Erik Roth, Abdul Wahab Shaikh, and Stephen Xu for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Barr Seitz, an editorial director in the New York office.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier

Rewired to outcompete

Meet Lilli, our generative AI tool that’s a researcher, a time saver, and an inspiration