DESIGN SEMINAR 087
don’t overload people with sensory input. It needed to be calmed down enough that it did not overwhelm, without taking out the joy and excitement.’
Hofton asked: ‘How did you go about testing that? Who was giving that feedback?’ ‘It was family groups – kids plus their families because really we are designing for both – through workshops where we laid out the ideas, plus specialists in some of these areas,’ explained Toon. ‘T e feedback was a mixture of personal response and opinion combined with more empirical information.’ Berresford felt that this off ered an opportunity to add many benefi ts. ‘For children going into hospital, it is a traumatic time, but if you have something to distract them it can help improve their mood. As designers, we’re inherently in tune with the impact design can have in this way, and this innate connection with fundamental skills that we all have is really key, alongside the science and understanding too – a combination of arts and science.’ TP Bennett director Tajal Rutherford-Bhatt added: ‘It’s about getting this balance right because it does aff ect us all. It’s probably fair to say that everyone has some kind of neurodiverse aspect to them – and people’s mood and feelings can even change on diff erent days of the week so they could react to the environment around them in diff erent ways.’
Evolution of the workspace Berresford describes the original offi ce of the 20th century as being almost a kind of factory. ‘It was purely about effi ciency and designed to be monitored. Incrementally, over time, there have been reactions against that. We’ve seen that even with the ‘Hoxtonifi cation’ of the city, with big banks and fi nancial fi rms looking for diff erent kinds of spaces. It’s part of what has almost been a human rebellion against these original inhuman spaces.’ Matt Jackson, director at BDG
Architecture + Design, said: ‘It’s interesting that, over the years, people have started asking the questions. It had previously been almost a taboo subject to raise points about mental health and neurodiversity. Even with the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995, a lot of its requirements just seemed like common sense, but out of wellness, neural divergence has emerged something that we all recognise needs to be leaned into even more. ‘T e ecosystem around it is widening further. Looking at people who are actually diagnosed, how is homeworking going for them? How might they have adapted their homeworking space to work well for them, and are there lessons we can learn from that which could be adopted in the workplace?’ He added: ‘We work with many creative agencies and many of the key fi gures there are very diff erent thinkers. What is average or normal when it comes to the human mind? Some creatives defi nitely think
‘As designers, we’re inherently in tune with the impact design can have in this way, and this innate
connection with fundamental skills that we all have is really key, alongside the science and understanding too – a
combination of arts and science.’
Helen Berresford
diff erently to many other people and that’s why they do the work that they do.’ Berresford believes that expectations and assumptions within wider society have changed to better recognise the diff erences between us. ‘For me at school, I wasn’t academic in the traditional sense because my brain works in a diff erent way – it was always more about colours, shapes [and] aesthetics. I was very aware that it was diff erent to the perception of what I should be doing compared to the children I went to school with. I was lucky that I had parents who were creative too so that helped to normalise it for me, but even so, at school, the mainstream didn’t seem to be doing what I was doing.
‘But in some ways now it feels very exciting because there is an awful lot more awareness of the diff erences and sensitivities that we all have, and its also helped everyone else to question things that they might have previously put up with.’
Time to re-evaluate
Reassessing the status quo is increasingly important in meeting the needs of those with neurodivergent conditions. Toon said: ‘We do a lot of design for inpatient mental health and quite often this is retrofi t, so you are squeezing plans into existing spaces. You can carefully plan the spaces for the beds and the nurse station for example, but it may not be clear on the plan how some of the corridors could become real pinch points at certain times of the day, and that kind of busy traffi c could potentially be a real problem for such patients. ‘T is requires a very detailed consultation process – or co-authoring – in which the people who are going to be using the spaces tell you all sorts of stuff about their experiences. As an architect, this can help you to unlock what this
Left Cressida Toon, director at Sonnemann Toon
Below Helen Berresford, partner and head of ID:SR
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