Learning

Designing for Neurodiversity

Photo by Lizzie Soufleris

Photo by Lizzie Soufleris

The spaces we live and work in have a profound impact on our neurobiology, influencing our productivity, moods, and level of stimulation. Designing for human wellbeing, rather than economics or efficiency, involves being informed by all the ways in which humans can vary neurologically. Those variations can be uniquely influenced by degrees of sensory stimulation, light, sound, shape, color, texture, as well as affordances for movement and different postures, in our environments. This article from ArchitecturalDigest digs into a framework for thinking about these variations when designing spaces crafted for human thriving.

"Debating the foundations of meaningful interior design would no doubt elicit familiar ideas about how the practice exists to make spaces functional, safe, and beautiful by means of color, texture, furnishings, lighting, art, and so forth. The goals, as designers often posit, is to create rooms that tell stories and mirror the places we’ve been before, but also leave an impression of their own. But outfitting a room in the the latest hot hue of the year or with an obsessively popular It couch doesn’t guarantee it will be successful in its functionality. That’s particularly true for users who experience the world through the lens of neurodiversity—what designer and researcher Bryony Roberts describes as “the variety of human brains, [reflecting] the neurological diversity of human populations.” Read more at ArchitecturalDigest.