Special Needs Studio

The Special Needs Studio is often retained as facilities planning and design for schools and other facilities serving deaf, blind and individuals with special needs. We work with local architects to take projects from concept design through opening of the facilities, helping to ensure sensitivity towards special needs users and compliance with local and federal requirements.

Key education planning/design services include:

Special Needs Design

Dickinson + Partners is a world leading team of experts providing Universal Design and Educational design consulting services. We work to maintain our leadership position by providing forward thinking and solution-oriented services, incorporating new technologies and specialized communication systems.

We believe in the concepts represented in Universal Design, a broad-spectrum of ideas aimed at producing buildings and environments that are inherently accessible to both people without disabilities and people with disabilities.

We also believe in User-Centered Design (UCD), the design philosophy in which the needs, wants, and limitations of the users are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process. Despite high profile discussions of UCD in the special needs community, until recently this substantial population of users has been largely ignored.

The designers at Dickinson + Partners bring the users back into the center of the design process. We engage them as team members and promote their needs, wants, and creative input.  Most importantly, this also includes engaging the student population in schools.

Many students with developmental disabilities, chronic health conditions or other challenges have shown us that they can exceed our expectations when given the opportunities they find in right-designed classrooms and excellent educational programs.