Autism and the built environment

Laburpena

Heidegger (2001) ended his essay entitled “Building, dwelling, thinking”, with an exhortation to “build out of dwelling, and think for the sake of dwelling”. Many definitions have been given for Architecture throughout history, but it is (or at least it should be) clear that its centre, its aim, its main objective, is the act of dwelling. This is the reason why Norberg-Schultz (1980) affirms that, in order to research and better know architectonic space, it is necessary to understand what he names “existential space”, i.e., that concept of space that permits an individual to construct a stable image of what is around him, and, at the same time, makes him belong to a society and a culture. The need of a space that can be lived, inhabited, or dwelled in underlies an architect’s work (even if it is consciously or not) in order for a building to become true architecture. It’s this existential experience of space that grants it the sense of place and not of a mere abstraction. As Montaner i Martorell (2002) has stated, “Space has an ideal, theoretical, generic and undefinedcondition, while place has a concrete, empirical, existential, articulated character, defined down to its details.