INCORPORATING THE BEHAVIORAL DIMENSION IN DESIGNING INCLUSIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR AUTISM

Abstract

In last two decades environment and behavior studies has profoundly influenced the practice of architecture and there is growing trend towards people-centered and evidence-based design. The field has tremendous application in designing for special needs; most of the researches on designing for special groups, accessibility codes and design guidelines are based on the functional needs of the users, necessity to explore potential of behavioral aspects to design for people with cognitive limitations is felt though. In the present research, the systematic study of behavioral features in autism has provided a wealth of understanding that is applied to the process of design. There are several stages to this research project, in initial stage, learning behaviors of children, their strength and weakness in educational spaces helped in defining ‘enabling environment’ for autism, which is tested in the subsequent stages to provide evidence based body of knowledge that is expected to help architects and designers to design autism friendly inclusive educational spaces. The purpose of this paper is to present the enabling aspects of educational environment for children with autism and measure their affects on functional performance.