The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

Cathy Purple Cherry, AIA, LEED AP, is personally connected to the community of children and adults with special needs through her life experiences – growing up with an older brother who has Down Syndrome and raising her son Matthew, adopted from Russia at the age of 3, who is multiply challenged with autism and other disabilities. Cathy and her husband also have two other children. Throughout her life, Cathy’s compassion for her brother has grown along with an ultimate understanding of the lessons learned from him, his life and the challenges he faces on a daily basis. His influence on her life became fully apparent as she and her husband raise Matthew. As an advocate for individuals with special needs, Cathy serves on the board of directors for the Summit School, which serves students with dyslexia and other learning differences, located in Edgewater, MD. She also serves on the board of directors of Opportunity Builders, Inc., a vocational training center in Millersville, MD, that serves adults with intellectual disabilities. Purple Cherry Architects also is the Architect of Record for their new 42,000-square-foot facility. Having an increased cognitive ability to absorb patterns in the behaviors of children with developmental disabilities, combined with her skills as an architect, has led Ms. Cherry to create Purposeful Architecture -- a passion for designing environments that will have a life-long positive effect on children and adults with special needs. Her trained eye and acute awareness of sibling dynamics lends to very different observations of the home environment and in a completely different way than other parents.

While her professional training provides her clients with what they need for their business environments, what about the home environment? Cathy watched her children as they interacted and took note of all the spaces where conflict arose over and over again. With these observations in mind, she has developed a guide of simple design and behavior strategies that can help to eliminate conflicts and set new rules, thus creating a well-rounded home environment for children and parents. Many of her concepts were born over the 15 years of raising Matthew. As her son progressed into his teen years – growing taller and stronger and posing many additional challenges to the goal of keeping peace – her strategies further changed to react to these difficult times.

The spatial and environmental elements within a home can either present obstacles and barriers for children on the autistic spectrum or can be well designed or modified to provide support to them. Simple changes having positive impact on your home environment can, more importantly, provide opportunities for greater successes in the relationships that parents witness between their autistic child and the child’s siblings. The ability to make changes in every space in your home to have a positive effect on co-existence truly exists.  Cathy will walk you through various concepts and show you the effective solutions that she implemented in her home over the years. Her extensive first-hand experience along with her spatial training through her architectural education and practice allow her to teach others about her successful lessons learned. Her singular goal throughout her experience has been to provide independence and success for her child with ASD and peace for her other children.

One of the biggest areas of conflict seems to be in the kitchen area. Often, this space is somewhat restricted in size and if all siblings are in the space at the same time, the conflict occurs more often than not because the child with ASD infringes on the personal space of his siblings by path-crossing to seek whatever they desire. Further, this is also an environment where dangerous items, such as knives, can be used in conflict. This is where simple, yet very specific, solutions can be applied. 

Cathy will discuss all areas of the home, including:

Bathrooms – using signage to help with privacy or providing a separate bathroom to support independence

Bedrooms – identifying specific spaces within a bedroom for hoarding and applying those “out-of-the-box” rules

Stairwells – wider or two stairwells to help reduce stress during path crossing

Outdoors – setting boundaries to help prevent conflict with other children or to reduce fleeing 

Family rooms – allowing ample area for separate seating and creating expanded areas for independent play

Cathy will present new and unique ideas for taking back control of your home along with her heartfelt yet witty observations of life with a child with ASD and how her “out-of-the-box” rules supported success in her home.