Acoustic comfort applied to the living spaces of people with autism: designing interactive and supportive environments

Buildings and spaces for living, working, caring and learning needs to be reconsidered and follow new design criteria. The change must be increasingly focused on the end users and thus to be adaptable by subjects with different profiles. The right combination of design and smart technologies can enable new and interesting changes. It is therefore important to understand users comfort criteria. People with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) present requirements that are not in line with traditional and standard ones. Therefore, the characteristics of the spaces dedicated to them must also be able to accommodate several aspects that this type of pervasive disorders may involve. The present study will focus on a spatial analysis of the environments dedicated to ASD individuals like schools, day centres and apartments and will introduce some hypotheses of possible technological implementations supporting their autonomy, families and caregivers.