Healthy Habits & Harmony
Health
The strength of the mind-body connection is well-documented. Physical health affects mental health and vice versa, so as part of a holistic approach to trauma-informed design, both Haven House and Cloud Nine Studios were built to improve the health of their residents.
At a basic level, this involved measures such as using premium, low-VOC building materials, modern plumbing techniques, active ventilation, and a water filtration system to greatly reduce the amount of harmful substances in the air and water.
At a higher level, this meant purposefully designing environments that promote healthy habits.
Sleeping Well
For those living with PTSD, simply making it through the day is draining, and processing trauma requires even more energy on top of that. Energy and willpower are restored through sleep, so when people get inadequate sleep, they are not able to heal effectively because participating in therapy, regulating their feelings, and maintaining other healthy habits all require resources that were depleted before the day even began. That is why the most important of the healthy habits promoted by these environments is to help residents get regular, high-quality sleep.
To start, we implemented over a dozen soundproofing measures, from extra-thick walls with offset studs and extra insulation to quieter doorbells, sound-insulated garbage disposals, and industrial hydraulic dampeners to make the convertible desk-beds close softly.
For light control, windows have either shutters or blackout shades, and all rooms have recessed, dimmable lights. Furthermore, most lights at Haven House and every light fixture in Cloud Nine Studios feature dim-to-warm technology, which means these lights automatically turn from cool white to warm yellow light as they are dimmed, which feels more comfortable and doesn’t interfere with sleep like regular lights do.
The entire environment is designed to help residents relax. The overall palette was based on colors that have calming effects on mood. Wherever possible, vertical lines were avoided, as they deviate from natural scenic expectations and heighten anxiety. Rather, horizontal lines, which mimic bodies of water or the horizon, were used in key areas to create a more tranquil environment, most notably on all bed headboards.
Several of the measures taken to improve sleep are more circuitous, but help nevertheless. For example, all bathtubs are made from enameled cast iron. As opposed to their much more common fiberglass counterparts, which are favored by builders because they are lighter and less expensive, cast iron tubs are much more pleasant to use. They do not flex when standing in them, which provides more stability and reduces leg fatigue, encouraging longer, more relaxing showers.
The differences when taking a bath are far more pronounced, because cast iron retains an enormous amount of heat, keeping water pleasantly warm for long durations. Fiberglass tubs, on the other hand, force people to constantly drain and refill the tub with scalding hot water, then manually mix it with the cold while avoiding burning themselves. This may fit the legal definition of taking a bath, but the experience is a far cry from laying back and relaxing for half an hour in a pool of water that stays steamy.
Although not an obvious sleep aid, cast iron tubs contribute to healthy sleep hygiene, because more enjoyable bathing leads to more frequent bathing, and more bathing leads to better sleep. Not only does freshly-washed skin remove a source of distracting irritation late at night, but raising the body's surface temperature shortly before bedtime also triggers a drop in core temperature that greatly aids in falling and staying asleep.
Cooking at Home
Since diet so profoundly affects health and cooking for oneself dramatically improves self-efficacy, the environment has been designed to encourage cooking at home as much as possible.
Haven House features two full kitchens with space for multiple people to cook concurrently in each, and at Cloud Nine Studios, despite being fairly small homes, each apartment has a full kitchen with the features and counter space typically found in a regular house.
All of these kitchens are fully stocked with not just dinnerware and flatware, but also the most commonly needed cookware, baking tools, and kitchen essentials, so most residents can take full advantage of the kitchens as they are. Modern conveniences such as coffee machines and air fryers (and, at Cloud Nine Studios, induction ranges) are provided to allow residents to make healthy, tasty food at home quickly and easily. Residents who want any other equipment in their kitchen are encouraged to notify management before buying anything, as most items that can be used by others will be provided upon request.
Maintaining Cleanliness
For people with depression or otherwise operating at diminished capacity, maintaining a clean and organized living space can be challenging. Falling behind on home maintenance tasks can create a negative feedback loop that perpetuates and potentially worsens symptoms.
To help combat this, all spaces have been built with maintenance in mind. Through design and material choices, nearly everything is hard to break and easy to clean.
Furthermore, very specific cleaning appliances were chosen to help make routine tasks more accessible. For example, both Haven House and each apartment at Cloud Nine Studios features Miele laundry machines. These washers and dryers are marvels of engineering, taking up half the space of typical machines and being far gentler on clothes. Even though they have the capacity of normal machines twice their size, their tiny appearance encourages people to launder smaller quantities of clothes, which the machines are designed to handle efficiently. This prevents dirty laundry from piling up into a daunting task and allows people to clean and wear their favorite clothes more frequently.
Similarly, since the homes at Cloud Nine Studios were designed for individual living, slimmer dishwashers were used instead of full-size machines, encouraging more frequent use and preventing dirty dishes from accumulating. For both laundry and dishes, smaller machines are not commonly used because they cost much more than larger ones; however, in this use case, their ability to help promote healthy habits justifies the expense.
Keeping Organized
Clutter and disorganization are visually distracting and can make people feel overwhelmed and out of control, causing stress and anxiety. On the contrary, organized environments can facilitate the implementation and maintenance of healthy routines, which are vital for trauma recovery. Structure and predictability can create a sense of stability and normalcy that is often disrupted after a traumatic experience. Any measures that help residents keep their environment organized directly contribute to their healing.
Fortunately, both homes are highly engineered environments that squeeze powerful functionality and organizational capabilities into compact spaces, and several of these features help residents keep their space tidy. For instance, the apartments at Cloud Nine Studios as well as the single rooms at Haven House each have highly customizable closets. Each is full of modular organization components based on a system created by famed industrial designer Dieter Rams, and can easily be modified to accommodate practically any needs or preferences.
But closets are not the only easy way to hide clutter. The centerpiece in each of these rooms is the custom convertible desk-bed—custom-made from solid wood, these flexible pieces of furniture allow residents to switch between an oversized desk and a queen-sized bed with a single motion. The bed does not have to be made before switching into desk mode, but what's more remarkable is that the desktop remains level as it swings under the bed, which means the desk doesn't have to be cleared off to transform back into a bed. Whether an unmade bed or a messy desk, a huge amount of visual clutter is always instantly hidden from view whenever the use mode is switched.
Several features throughout the homes encourage specific organizational behaviors. For example, some rooms in Haven House have custom closet doors that were designed around visual cues that lead people to keep them closed. Each set of four doors are made of continuous pieces of exotic hardwood in a layout that looks distinctly mismatched when the closet is left open, but completes a beautiful puzzle when closed, delivering a mild dose of dopamine to reinforce the habit of keeping the visual chaos of the closet hidden from view.
In the double rooms directly above, a different behavior is being encouraged. There, the power strips mounted to the bedside tables provide the only outlets near the heads of each bed, making the table the natural place to charge mobile phones. This places each person's mobile device as far as possible from her roommate, improving harmony by reducing distractions and any actual or perceived snooping. It can also reduce anxiety and increase a sense of stability to have a regular home for such an important personal item in a shared living environment.
However, there is a larger benefit yet. These tables are also the exact depth of the wing walls of the headboard, forming a small alcove that is blocked from view when lying down normally. The space helps promote good sleep hygiene by providing a place for residents to put their phones that is close and secure, but out of sight. This barrier is both practically and symbolically important because it helps to create both a physical and mental separation from the phone when it's time to sleep.
Harmony
A harmonious home environment is crucial to trauma recovery, as sustained conflict creates a state of chronic stress that can hinder the healing process. At both housing facilities, harmony is promoted by designing environments that prevent conflict between residents whenever possible.
Individual Harmony
Cloud Nine Studios has many features designed to help all the residents get along with each other, mostly by avoiding conflict in the common areas and preventing unwanted sounds from disturbing others. Since unwanted sounds from neighbors are the most likely source of conflict between residents in apartment complexes, there is a noise level policy that is strictly enforced; however, this is rarely a problem due to extensive sound controls inside, outside, and between each apartment.
Inside each apartment, the garbage disposals are encased in thick insulation shells to quiet them, the convertible desk-beds have industrial hydraulic dampeners to make them close softly instead of thudding, and the TVs are mounted on exterior walls, with sound focused perpendicular to neighbors on either side. Plus, double-paned windows and solid core doors block sound coming in or going out of each home.
Outside, the waterfall portion of the Recovery Pathway not only aims to elevate residents' moods, but the white noise it generates also helps to mask any noise made while entering or exiting the building. Plus, to make everyone more comfortable and avoid other conflicts, wide pathways and oversized common outdoor areas mean residents won't ever be forced too close to each other. In addition, having the bicycle storage and communal trash bins located out of sight of the main living area helps prevent conflicts that arise from how residents use these amenities.
Finally, the walls between neighboring units were built extra thick with sound-deadening panels and staggered stud construction, which drastically reduces the sound transmission through them. Similarly, the extra joist thickness that was required for the bowl basins in upstairs apartments also helped reduce the sounds traveling between floors.
At Haven House, promoting harmony is far more complex because it is a group living environment. There, measures were taken to address the most common sources of conflict between residents in shared housing.
Many conflicts are avoided simply by providing plenty of space. Haven House has massive amounts of storage, both communal and individual. Each resident gets more space for their clothing, food, and other personal items than most would ever need. In shared bathrooms, each person has their own equal storage space as well as a dedicated towel rack, a simple but powerful measure that ensures there is never a need to hang wet towels anywhere that could bother another resident.
All shared spaces in the home are designed specifically to be shared equally like this. For example, the lower floor of Haven House is built to be shared by four people. Everything from the two refrigerators to the two bathrooms is designed to be split equally—even the storage closet, which has four perfectly identical compartments at convenient levels as well as additional spaces at the top and bottom that are easy to subdivide.
In shared living environments such as this, conflicts frequently occur over sensory annoyances. Great care has been taken to prevent these, especially those that could disturb sleep. For example, all recessed lights in double occupancy rooms are on gimbals so they can be pointed at walls and away from the beds. This not only provides softer, indirect lighting that illuminates art and reduces shadows; it also prevents one resident from accidentally turning on a light that shines directly into the eyes of her roommate.
Because this home is not just shared, but shared by people recovering from trauma, extra care has been taken to improve the experience of each individual without negatively impacting the experience of others; for more examples, see Choice, Comfort, & Privacy, concepts which are deeply interrelated with harmony.