Today, “trauma-healing opportunities” increasingly influence how places are designed for many U.S. communities, both urban and rural, according to Elisandra Garcia with national design firm El Dorado. Whether it’s an installation, a landscape, a camp, community center, or even an entire city district, El Dorado’s teams of architects and planners often begin by determining how their work can support healing for young people or families — even neighborhoods — coping with scarring from the ordeals of addiction, for example, or the unintended effects of justice and welfare systems.
“There is a growing awareness of the importance of wellness, including recovery from trauma, as a basis for new buildings and other resources,” says Garcia, who is a bilingual director of engagement with El Dorado. “It’s foundational to promote this growing understanding of how environments can assist in the recovery, rather than heighten anxieties and conflict.”
“Trauma-informed design, also known as TID, is an increasingly recognized standard, and not exclusive to healthcare clinics or educational facilities,” she adds, pointing to such works as the 80-acre wooded campus for Parrot Creek Child & Family Services near Portland, Ore., and the new Mattie Rhodes Cultural Center amid Kansas City, Mo.’s Hispanic and Latinx communities.
It’s just a start: Lately El Dorado — the Kansas City and Portland, Ore.-based architecture, urban design, fabrication and curatorial firm — has brought the principles of trauma-informed design to help support thousands of individuals across the country.
What Is Trauma-Informed Design?
Emerging from design concepts originating in behavioral healthcare and supportive housing, TID “centers healing as an integral part of the design process and prioritizes it as an observable outcome in the built environment,” according to nonprofit POAH and other groups such as the Trauma-Informed Design Society and the Center for Health Design. These and practitioner experts like Garcia describe the key elements as:
- Empowerment. Ways to offer occupants a sense of control over environment are essential, and can include things like lightweight movable furnishings and controls for lighting, privacy, and room temperature.
- Beauty and nature. Views and access to nature are shown to promote both physical and psychological healing. So do biophilic elements such as natural materials, plantings, plentiful daylight and spaces promoting creativity.
- Safety and comfort. Designing for trauma starts with visually simple, clear spaces with open sightlines as appropriate, with added privacy as needed, and security always.
- Community. Spaces and elements that support gathering together and sharing with others — such as flexible partitions and movable furniture, indoors and out — support the healing process by reinforcing the essential elements of trust, joy, choice and empowerment.
According to Garcia, trauma-informed design principles should be applied to typologies such as schools, community centers, many civic environments as well as housing, including affordable housing developments. Even large-scale city planning and urban design efforts, such as El Dorado’s much-discussed Albina Vision Community Investment Plan, help nurture whole neighborhoods with TID.
Healing from trauma often emerges as a design goal once the client groups have engaged with El Dorado in a predesign visioning process, says Garcia. “Our clients who are behavioral healthcare providers and social service organizations understand how personal and community traumas affect our decisions. Others, such as some public agencies or nonprofits outside the healthcare sector, might make this discovery in our work together.
The 2024 virtual Men’s Round Table will be held Q4, 2024, date TBD.
