Encounters | My Site 2

Intersectional Neurodiverse Experiences in Architecture, Design Practice & Education, 2025

NAN - Neurodiversity Architecture Network CIC invited three spatial practitioners to discuss Intersectional Neurodiverse Experiences in Architecture and Design Practice and Education. Drawing on shared experiences to raise awareness about the overlooked intersectional implications in spatial practices and education.

Above: Encounters at Fitzrovia Chapel (2025) - Participatory performance with audio, 2 mins

Encounters 2017 - 2020

Encounters (2017) A series of mobile booths made of plywood, casters, upholstery, iPod, headphones and soundtrack.

Two people meet face-to-face through a window in a partition. For three minutes they listen together to an

audio recording. The recording contains a series of questions about the idea of ‘what is an authentic relationship?'.

Encounters is durational and participatory performance lasting for up to a month at a time inhabiting the foyers, receptions and other ‘through spaces’ transforming an impersonal service area into a zone of potential intimacy and confession.

The artist designed a series of plywood ‘booths’ to stage her Encounters. These booths are folding, mobile structures that pack away and can be set up very simply requiring less than two cubic metres of space. They are designed to be located in 'through’ spaces – like lobbies or foyers – where people pass through on their way to and from a place

of work. The different booths are adapted to different ways of staging the encounter.

Relationships are fundamental to all aspects of society and yet there is a current crisis in human engagement

where the rise of a new populist rhetoric is dividing communities in the drive the power. The Encounter asks us to re-stage that first face-to-face meeting with a stranger and share our thoughts and feelings about relationships – to take a little time out of our busy and habitual patterns to engage with the fundamental and different subjectivity which we all experience.

This work was initiated and informed by difficulties that some autistic people may feel with their daily encounters.

The artist created a space fit for a meaningful exchange about communication.

Encounters during this period were followed by a discussion in the form of an interview about their experience. Most participants, regardless of cultural differences expressed that this type of engagement – proximity and directness of the face-to face engagement was not normative in contemporary interpersonal relationships.

All participants surprised and unaccustomed to have the opportunity to share their perceptions about the simple day to day interactions. Most were pleasantly surprised and appreciated to have a little time out of their busy schedule.

Encounters (2019), plywood, casters, upholstery, iPod, headphones and soundtrack.

Excerpts from interviews:

"In the sense of what he was saying...I could possibly relate to the audio right now. Not in the exact moment but in my life right now. I could feel that this could be part of the exhibition that I could stand and listen to the audio but in a very different context. I like this set-up with the box because the audio masks - it's kind of separated from the world".

"He said I moved him, I shook him to his core – that comment shocked me. I've never heard such a comment from other people. I have heard such a thing in my lifetime actually".

" Your way of thinking and how you react to people?".

"I think it's about a personal experience, connection, isolation in the world and an individual's experience of that."