While organisations in various domains increasingly seek cognitive talents associated with being autistic, several barriers prevent autistic people from joining the workforce. One such barrier concerns higher education: compared to their peers, autistic students are more likely to encounter difficulties during college years. Besides challenges with concentration, socialising, or independent living, their specific way of interpreting the world can make their environment appear disorientating and frightening. Yet in inclusive education practices, the role of the built environment – the design of the campus, buildings, and spaces – hardly receives attention. Our study therefore aims to understand college life on the autism spectrum, viewed through the built environment lens. We used participatory methods to explore five autistic students’ experiences at our university and how spaces affect these. The goal was to identify where – in which spaces – they feel most (un)comfortable. We invited a student organisation to use the insights gained to make their main event more autism-friendly and asked participants to assess the interventions. Central in participants’ college life are study, sociality, and retreat. While their experiences are diverse, for all five the role of space relates to clarity (e.g. clear circulation), distractions (e.g. background noise), and possibilities to escape in socially acceptable ways. Predictability and having control are crucial to ease stress and increase comfort. Rather than explicitly suggesting improvements for spaces experienced as uncomfortable, participants demonstrate creative use and appropriation of spaces. We conclude that small interventions can already make a difference. For future research, we encourage addressing autistic students’ real-life challenges and putting insights into practice while respecting the diversity on the autism spectrum. Given this diversity, we also propose different ways to involve autistic people in studies about and with them.

The Knoxville International Energy Exposition, held in 1982, was the first world’s fair in which the People’s Republic of China (PRC) participated. Shortly after the rapprochement between the PRC and the United States, the erection of the Chinese Pavilion in Knoxville overlapped a ‘honeymoon’ period of the two nations, marked by growing political and architectural exchange after decades of isolation. This article argues that the Chinese Pavilion at the Knoxville fair materialises China’s enthusiastic yet discreet interaction with the US during moments of diplomatic sensitivity, economic uncertainty, and shifting ideological positions in the 1970s and 1980s. Constructed at the height of the Cold War, the pavilion symbolised the PRC’s diplomatic success in rebuilding its relations with the Western Bloc, while the realisation of the pavilion was challenged by sensitive political issues, China’s limited budget, and a lack of exhibits. Under China’s new Reform and Opening-Up policy, the building also marked a turning point in pavilion design for the country in international events, with a significant shift of focus from overt ideological promotion to a self-orientalised cultural display through the pavilion’s design process. It illuminates a key moment in the architectural history of modern China when the nation’s growing self-awareness of its global image prompted its officials, exhibition planners, and architects to reconsider the relationship between pavilion design and the architectural profession.

This paper is about the neighbourhoods known and remembered by a particular pattern of social relations and specific, recurrent rituals. It delves into the nuanced dynamics of place-making within the historic pu-jing neighbourhoods of Quanzhou, utilizing an approach that combines architectural ethnography and ‘research by drawing’. After an exploration of the daily practices and festive rituals intertwined within these neighbourhoods, the paper reflects on the enduring cultural significance and deep-rooted identity shaping these spaces over generations. It underscores the critical role of collective agency in preserving these intimate, historically rich spaces amidst the contemporary challenges posed by global homogeneity, offering valuable insights into the resilience of community identity and the perpetual contestation between local authenticity and global homogeneity in contemporary urban contexts.