How Can We Meet The Rising Challenges of Autism?
MAYVA DONNON
November 2, 2017
The new Bancroft campus responds — through design.
An expansive tree-lined campus with sensory patterns that ease transitions and orient those with neurological challenges, autism, and intellectual and developmental disabilities. A solution that establishes a design language to serve the national special needs community into the future.
This is Bancroft’s new world-class campus at Mount Laurel, an aesthetic, functional, clinical response to shaping how the world designs for autism.
The design team crafted a variety of features that advance the world’s response to autism:
- The design team crafted a variety of features that advance the world’s response to autism:
- Connection to the environment via a nature trail and views to farm fields, streams and a pond
- Geometric & color-coded patterns to symbolize space typologies and uses
- Common spaces with shared resources, including a Vocational Village, Conference and Training Center, and spaces for arts, music, and fitness, such as the recreation and therapy pool, all designed with smooth transitions
- An inventive masterplan in which community and learning spaces, therapeutic environments, and residential units fan out in increasingly modest and secluded groupings to provide privacy and comfort.
- Custom-designed clinics that offer medical, dental, and mental health services on campus
- Right-sized life skills and transitional programming to celebrate progress in skill-building to impart participants with dignity and a sense of self-value
