jailcd2019-007: Renovation Design Suggestion for Autism Classroom: A Case Study of Autism Service Center in Medan, Indonesia

Abstract

communication. From the 1940s through the 1960s, it was generally believed that people with autism had a conscious desire to withdraw from any social interaction. Most children with autism have difficulty with hearing, focus and speech. Children with autism are special children, where the way they learn and the space they need is different from the children in general. In addition to the role of parents and teachers was the role of study space is also very influential in the autism children learning system. According to Clinic Autism in Indonesia 1 in 250 children identified autism, in 2015 there are  12.800 children diagnosed autism and the number continues to grow every year. Knowledge about autism is still lacking in Indonesia, many parents do not understand and most of the families are not open to this issue, causes data collection process very difficult and effective data very limited. Autism Service Center in Medan, Indonesia is a general school specifically for children with ASD. Although the teaching programs are prepared for ASD children, the classrooms are not designed as needed for ASD children. As school must better understand the needs of children with ASD,a better understanding of the requirements and attributes of design guidelines is necessary. For this research I interviewed 30 students from ages 6 to 9 years old and give them 7 questions by showing them 2 types of picture in every question and they need choose which picture that they like. These interventions can be delivered in various forms such as colors, shapes and lighting. The purpose of this study is to investigate the important role of color,  shape  and lighting of autism children learning room to improve the  quality  of learning.  This  research  is  a  preliminary  study  to  the  problematic  of  design  learning  environments  for school-aged children with ASD. Resulting data is expected to provide renovation design suggestions for classrooms to improve the comfortableness of learning space as well as the learning efficiency of ASD children.