How can trauma-informed design be applied in landscape architecture? And in the context of transitional housing?
Source: Shan Jiang, Therapeutic landscapes and healing gardens: A review of Chinese literature in relation to the studies in western countries
Trauma-informed design provides landscape architects with incredibly relevant and flexible tools for their design tool box.
Given the prevelence of trauma in our society and the long lasting impacts of trauma, it’s important to take a trauma-informed approach whenever you’re designing for a population who have experienced trauma—and it’s especially important when working with vulnerable populations who may be suffering from co-occurring traumas.
How we experience an environment can have a profound effect on whether we use it or not.
It helps to consider the potential impacts of trauma like you would consider the potential impact of water on site or the composition of the soil for the plants you want to grow.
When you design a park, for instance, you take these variables into account because ultimately you have the goal that people will use the space to meet their needs.
The same is true of transitional housing environments. Yet, given the nature of trauma, it means understanding common things that create conflict. There are also unique triggers that come from the person’s unique experience of their trauma, and for that, you must design for flexible, personalized spaces.
If a site is ill-equipped to serve the needs of the population using it, whether that be physical needs like water or shade, or psychological needs like privacy, connection, it’s actually inhibiting a person’s ability to provide for themselves. And I think we can all agree that that’s the opposite of what we hope to do with transitional housing.
It’s also important to say that there’s a long history of the study of therapeutic landscapes in landscape architecture. There is a ton of research and resources for designing healing space. Given the immense need for healing landscapes for people coming out of houselessness, it’s a great place to look for things.
Therapeutic gardens have been found to be so impactful as a healing tool, that therapeutic gardens are becoming synonymous with health institutions like hospitals, retirement centers, rehabilitation clinics, etc.
These fields of study are great resources to help us as landscape architects understand what helps people heal
Many of the principles and practices can be applied in the trauma-informed transitional housing setting to help support better resident outcomes.
But there’s an important distinction to make when considering how to make your therapeutic landscapes trauma-informed— it’s important to remember the subjective component of trauma. We must provide residents enough space, agency, and freedom to adapt the resources available to their specific needs. This is work we cannot do ourselves and thus requires residents to play a large role in the development of spaces and maintenance of spaces to ensure it continues to meet their needs into the future.