Capturing Experience: An Autistic Approach to Designing Space

摘要

In conceiving the built environment, designers are inherently involved in shaping spaces people will live in. On the assumption that their interventions in space affect people's experience, many designers take up the responsibility to take people's experience into account. However, given the diversity of people who interact with space, it is still a challenge for designers to anticipate the diverse experiences of future users. Building on designers' challenge in anticipating experience, this paper discusses the particular design process of a man, diagnosed with autism, who aspires to capture experience in designing his own living environment. Although his structured sequence of well-reasoned design decisions could be read in the light of an autistic way of thinking, the story of the man himself offers a more nuanced picture of his design approach, which raises fundamental questions about issues that seem to be taken for granted in our own context of designing.