mobile reach

DREXEL AUTISM INSTITUTE

This Project was a collaboration between the Design + Care 4 Health Lab and The Autism Institute. In the summer of 2012 and during the 2012/2013 school year, The Drexel Autism Institute and a multidisciplinary group of students from the Westphal College of Media Arts and Design, led by Dee Nicholas, collaborated on a design to create a mobile clinic for the use of the Institute. The first mobile assessment unit in a heavily populated urban area and one of the very few mobile clinics for autism in the U.S., this clinic works to reach underserved populations in this urban area. The design was developed through a six-week studio course, in which four multidisciplinary teams of students developed designs for the project. The program included designing the interior and exterior of the mobile unit.

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OCTOBER 2013

“The newly established A.J. Drexel Autism Institute of Drexel University — the first institute in the country to treat autism as a public health issue — is working on plans to put Philadelphia’s first mobile autism unit on the road. The converted van will be used for testing and diagnosis, with the intention of getting help to currently under-served communities. When it came time to find designers for the van conversion, the institute kept it in the family: They turned to students at the university’s Westphal College of Media Arts and Design. D.S. Nicholas, an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Architecture and Interiors, was tapped to teach an interdisciplinary course tasked with coming up with design proposals”

Philly Metro “Drexel’s Autism Institute goes mobile” / Read similar Article