[Music] welcome back welcome back and now we are joined by a special guest we have AJ Perot Wilde's who is an interior designer a national architectural and design manager in fact with great experience with designing for autism and is also an autism mom yes so many many many different things that we want to talk about with you but maybe we should start with autism mom yeah you a designer first and then became an autism mom yet that sort of you know help push you towards design for autism I actually wanted to be an interior designer since I was in eighth grade so it was one of those people that just was really driven and passionate about design and was an overachiever in college and was doing everything and actually was giving a company to run at 25 Wow so it was a design company yeah a design-build company so so I had a lot of experience but my thesis in school was actually designing for Alzheimer's and so I had studied so much about the psychological ramifications of the environment on other mental health issues so when my son was diagnosed about age three I immediately thought well there must be tons of research on this there must be you know look loads of evidence-based research and there was madness you were gonna pioneer yeah yeah what's that exciting you are about daunting it was really daunting but it was I luckily had amazing mentors there's actually doctorates of interior design and I know most all of them and a few doctors of interior design really encouraged me they said you can do this you need to if someone needs to do this and it might as well beat you so you just kind of took the lead in designing for autism yes I really started looking at the neural functions of what's happening in the brain and one of the first books I read that made me think wow there's there is something here was Temple Grandin's thinking in pictures right and understanding how she looked at the environment and what she was experiencing and how different it was and as an interior designer you design for the five senses but you design for what it's like for you right it's your experience and so what I've had to do is teach people design empathy what is it like for some someone else to experience that color or that brightness or how is that receptive to them and it might be completely different than it is in your own experience so I'm curious when you're dealing with a client who wants to make a space that's more autism friendly what are some tips and tricks that you give them to make it more inclusive so it's interesting because it's changed over the years the the first you know 10 years we were trying to get people to minimize things and be able to control the environment right whether it's color or lighting or less sensory input yes and because think about it everything designed for a child is in primary colors right which is for 90% of the kids with autism is the worst thing in the world absolutely and so it's really hard to take color off of walls in the environments but it's much easier to have a blank slate and then add things and then being able to take them down so it's trying to change the philosophy so it doesn't look like Ronald McDonald came in there and threw up right right so that was it simplifying it but then we actually had the challenge of because everything was so simplified it started to look institutional yeah and the families like the mothers and the fathers and the grandparents didn't like their child going into a place that felt like an institution and the therapist actually had a hard time doing that yeah it doesn't feel warm and gushy right yeah and they need the STEMI all right where is these kids don't right and so what we've had to do is figure out how to balance that that framework and making sure that it is stimulating for the other caregivers and the therapists in certain areas where it's it's okay to have that or it's not primary for you know therapy to be happening there or something really pivotal and so they have enough stimuli that it makes them feel good that they're there and then it's still controlled for the in jewels that need that therapy now we have some pictures of some of the things spaces that you've worked on and so talk to us a little bit out tell us what we see well this is a home environment and it was interesting it was for a little boy and you can you can tell by the picture the color of the room we changed it from yellow stripes to a light pink now this took the the father of the little boy was not excited but some of those came from the research of I don't know if you've ever heard of the prison research studies on color that they they painted all these prison cells different colors and found that this very subtle pink color was the one that actually kept people most calm really and so through a lot of other research that that warm kind of taupey not pepto-bismol pink but like you know but something that's very pastel and muted and more in the warm tones 10 the children tend to do better on that so it's also simplified you simplified yeah yeah yeah so there wasn't as much sensory input right and then there's a toxicology standpoint okay when you're looking at the environment and you're looking at all these kids have you know allergy issues dust mites and things like that and so you know using like 100 percent wool unless the child's logic to wool or cotton and simplifying it but also making sure that they're not getting any VOCs from the environment that's gonna make them worse yeah I think we've all gotten so used to like when things come and they have a stench to at a graphical stack I went to buy a pair of shoes designer shoes that were athletic shoes and they open the box and then the smell waft it off and I said I had to get on a plane and I said they're not gonna let me on the point of this right thanks they smell like they're gonna catch fire and the people the store were like oh that's what all the shoes smell I know they don't open this one it doesn't smell that way we shouldn't be putting things in our kids room you'd have that take that into effect absolutely and I'm I'm a designer that is LEED accredited professional which is LEED is leadership for Energy and Environmental Design and so I really helped push the toxicology effects on human beings and I have to say like corporate environments and littlez and all these other commercial regulated interiors you could eat a lot of the furniture now it's so we were so vigilant on the types of adhesives were using the paint reusing but that doesn't always translate into the home environment and things like the toy industry or the manufacturers right home goods it doesn't always we're not at that same level of diligence yet I love that you're you take that into consideration so it's environmentally good and it from a toxic toxicology perspective clean for the kiddos because that's important here little immune systems ok let's go back pictures ok ok so this is and this is nothing I designed but this is one of the things that I show a lot of people this is a visual wayfinding board at the National History Museum in New York and it's not there anymore because they changed all to iPads but what I loved about it that's actually my son Wow being able to use actual pictures or pec symbols or things in the environment for wayfinding we do a lot of that because it really helps that individual understand where they're going and so for you know whether even if you don't speak English which they have a lot of visitors that are speaking English they can go oh I want to go see the mummies I go to floor 3 in here I go and he could figure it out anybody could so it's looking at you know how do people if you're trying to make sure that these groups of individuals are as inclusive as possible how do we look at wayfinding so that they can understand where to go in an airport or weird get a taxi or how to get navigate through a building and some of that's a safety concern absolutely if they can't get out of a building that's a problem now do you design mostly for larger sites or do you do mostly personal homes or a combination there I've done everything so I've done a lot of personal homes a lot of personal spaces classrooms schools entire schools therapy clinics everything from a private practicing doctor to a very large hospital I'm getting a lot of requests now and I've served in in Minnesota on the Governor's Council for looking at autism and aging and so you know they can't go into a regular group home that's not meeting their needs right and they can't go into a senior living a typical senior living space so how do we create these environments that are going to make sure that they're successful and that they're the leading a happy life and so it's interesting because as we see the the number of kids increase and kids that are like my son's age 22 now we're looking at all these aging factors yes and it's a different it's a different set of circumstances but it is as it's just as important as when they're little well I was about your son today he's great I mean you would consider him to be severely autistic yes he is on the severe side and in terms of is he nonverbal he speaks maybe six seven words a day he's very he was not healed can answer a question but he's not conversational okay and he's still not good like it was super hot the other day and it came down wearing a sweater I feel like dude so any any needs a PCA but what we've found is through technology in her home we have cameras in our homes and we have sensors so we can see what he's doing so now he's had a lot more independence of living in our house without us right which is huge for him yes and he's a great traveler and I think that's one of the things I learned from the design aspect is you know kids need their schedules but sometimes being so adherent to it is actually not a good thing because then they can't transition into the world world right and when your flight gets delayed they meltdown and he I call it like an environmental stimuli diet so at one point in his life when he was four and five we couldn't take him out of house he couldn't take him into a retail store you couldn't take him to the grocery store because he was just freaked out and my husband was like oh just keep him at home and I'm like absolutely not I am a person that goes lots of different places yeah doesn't do the same thing at all every day go this kid's gotta learn how to deal with and so we would start and going to places and he would maybe last you know at a Children's Museum ten minutes but we kind of figured out some some ways and maybe make him do better and we go back and we try it again I give motivation until the point where you know by the time he was 10 I could fly him to Hawaii and he wouldn't get upset if the plane wasn't on time and he sits in a five-star restaurant no problem I mean he knows how to navigate in the real world and now he travels yes yes yes so he does speak when he's in front of an audience so did you discover that it was one of those things that I had done a few political rallies for Autism Awareness rise like that and he would I'd get him to come and stage and say one sentence right and so I got a call to this wonderful organization called peace love that creates a mental health awareness through art and so it's a lot about art therapy and they said hey would you come and talk about autism and art cuz we know your son loves to do art and I said well sure I can come and talk but why don't we get him to talk and they went great idea and I said okay let me tell you something it really doesn't talk so this could be a disaster and actually the the rehearsal was a disaster right but when he got out there and he saw the audience and he saw how they reacted to him he was like this is my calling this is we have to say what he loves it he talks about his art okay he doesn't identify that there's anything wrong with him mm-hmm he doesn't think he has any type of disability which is great ya know he thinks he's an artist and he's right an amazing artist and he sells his work and he and it's it's getting put in a lot of healthcare organisation great you know large organizations that treat kids like ours right and so he's really been been making a name for himself but he loves the bigger the audience the better feels fantastic absolutely right can we look at a couple more of the pictures Samantha there was one you were showing that was from Fraser yes so talk to us a little bit about this tell us a little bit about Fraser so Fraser does in therapy it's the premier autism therapy Center in Minnesota and they were just building their new Woodbury claimant this was one of the smaller sites so they're up to about seven sites now in the metro area and this you can see there's a lots of bright colors and lots of things going on but the therapy environments are actually very neutralized they're very very controlled we're using a lot of natural sunlight through solar tubes but very not a lot of color hardly any pattern so that therapists can bring that in when they need to sure but the waiting room that's actually the mind Institute but the waiting room we add in a lot more color and that was more helpful for you know the parents and how they felt their child coming out so this is the so this is the mind which is in yes and it was interesting because we were actually patients of the old Center and then the architecture firm called me and said hey could you help us on this I'm like we're actually patients and so we had really bad experiences yeah we had really bad experiences in the old hospital and someone like let me tell you the places that need to get fixed so the new building had to not only be receptive to children with autism and their families but also researchers we're trying to get the best and the brightest we're doing them from you know AIDS research cancer they need to feel like they're going to a beautiful place so that is the the lounge that you first walk in to and you can see there's hardly any pattern and on the flooring because that can be problematic for kids walking through the space we're using a lot of natural materials a lot of natural light which natural light is is really really important if they can go to the next slide I think we're we're going through there we go the waiting room waiting rooms can be different dramatic for families that are coming especially if they don't have a diagnosis and it's not just a mother and a child it's like their grandparents are there and so we created these pods for the families to sit in for a good portion of the day and it's actually looking out onto a secure courtyard so if the kids have a half an hour break while they're interviewing the parents the kids can be out in the courtyard running around and doing this Buhler activity and that was January so that's why it doesn't look so pretty better than Minnesota it looks very pretty yeah well fascinating work I mean really interesting what you're doing and where can people find more information so um one of the things that I did is I wrote three books because in your spare time yeah my dad it was helped funded by ASID which is American Society of interior designers and I had so many requests coming in and I've been very very generous with all my research because to me it's about getting the information out there's there's more projects that I could ever look at and I also do right now I'm focused on commercial design and workplace and that keeps me sane you know and there's there's ties between the two um but I I can't do autism all the time right so actually not healthy for me right well right so writing these books was one way to get the information out and it's written in a way that there's the scientific and the very like textbook information so if you're an architect or designer you you know what I'm talking about and then on the other side there's the personal stories and actual stories of actual clients that parents can really relate to it kind of has two sides to it so how can people find those and it's pretty easy that's interior design for autism and you go on Amazon they're all ebooks but they're based on age range so because the individuals need different things at different ages birth through age five and then kind of the school-age years and then from early adulthood to geriatric I'm wonderful and all available on Amazon yes thank you so you aging that you're doing at coming in being with us today was really fun my opening was wonderful and congratulations on Hawaii your son oh thank you thank you [Music] you