Study Design- Phase 1
To reach this goal of developing a framework
for architectural guidelines for autism, a two
phase study was carried out. The
fi
rst phase of
this was a cross-sectional descriptive study of
the primary caregivers and teachers of autistic
children. The objective of this
fi
rst phase was to
rank the impact of speci
fi
c architectural factors
or spatial characteristics - acoustics, visual
(colors and patterns), visual (lighting), texture,
olfactory and spatial sequencing of functions.
The results from this ranking would indicate
the most in
fl
uential architectural factors on
autistic behavior, which would become the
intervention variables to be studied in Phase 2.