Architecture & Access in partnership with Amaze and Deakin University have launched a guide for designing spaces to support neurodivergent people.
How it all began
The Reset Room Design Guide has been four years in the making with a collaboration between Deakin University and Architecture & Access.
The School of Occupational Therapy at Deakin University within their Fourth Year honours program require students to complete a research project over a one-year period. Architecture & Access support this program by offering topics for exploration and supervision alongside their university supervisor. This program gives industry the opportunity to pose real questions that need further investigation. Cathryn Grant from Architecture & Access and Valerie Watchorn from Deakin University have worked with five students to explore and investigate issues regarding access for people with a disability to the built environment. Four of these have been specifically around access for people that are neurodivergent and three specifically around the use of sensory or reset rooms.
Research
With an awareness that sensory/reset rooms were being installed within buildings especially shopping centres, universities and sporting stadiums it was unclear to us how people were finding out about them, how they were signed within the building, what was going into these rooms and how useful were they to people who used them? With these questions in mind, we worked with the students to develop surveys to ask these questions of the people using these rooms. One study focused on parent’s/supports of people using these rooms, another on adults using the rooms independently and the third on industry professionals involved in the design and/or management of these rooms. These are the first studies of their kind in Australia.
As occupational therapists we are keenly interested in what people do, and within these studies we were keen to understand how and what people do in the sensory rooms and how the sensory rooms supported their participation in activities outside of these rooms.
Our findings were most people reported that the use of sensory room extended their stay between 30-90 minutes in the public building they were in. One participant who was unable to stay longer did however comment that whilst it did not extend their stay,
“but it meant that we could leave calmly and safely”.
Research Findings
We found that people used these rooms both to reduce sensory stimulation and calm down in response to the busy external environment and conversely people used the rooms to increase sensory stimulation. Other users report that the space was beneficial and allowed them to unmask or,
“to study where I am not expected to conform to typical behaviours”.
” I felt that one of my children was getting agitated and needed some time out to decompress due to the busy environment and the amount of people”.
There were challenges to using and managing the use of these rooms also. Taking these findings Architecture & Access and Deakin University reached out to Amaze to partner with and together use these findings and produce a guide for designers and building owner/managers who want to create a sensory/reset room.
Guide Themes
Three themes emerged around locating the rooms, which includes signage, information about the location or presence of a room within a building, the design of the room including furniture and fittings and then the management of the room, when is it open, how do you access it, when and how often is it cleaned.
An important message is that there is no one right size or design of these types of rooms. The context of the building they are within and the events and activities that go on within these buildings are important to consider and especially if the occupant profiles are more likely to be children in this building, then what is the peak occupancy numbers.
This document is truly a guide, it is not prescriptive but provides key considerations for the design and implementation of these rooms and recommends that users and access consultants are part of the process.
Download the Reset Room Guide and enjoy watching the ‘explain the guide’ video.
Get in touch with Architecture & Access to discuss how we can advise you, we have a team of Neuro-inclusive Design Consultants that can assist in developing a Reset Room in your building or your next project.
