Healthy Habits & Harmony

Alt: Health, Harmony, & Habits

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

The most important of these habits is promoting proper sleep hygiene 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 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.

(if kept, reword previous furthermore) Furthermore, this design extends to the choice and placement of furniture/furnishings. Example: Bedside tables in Rooms 6 & 7. Encourages phones to be placed on side away from roommate. On other side of a visual barrier. Also a consistent placement, for stability, predictability.

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.

Several elements in both homes are designed to help residents keep their environment organized.

All apartments at Cloud Nine Studios as well as all single rooms at Haven House have closets that can be customized. These closets use 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.

Each of these rooms are highly engineered environments that squeeze maximum organizational capabilities and functionality into a compact space.

The centerpiece of each of these rooms is the custom convertible desk-bed. Custom-made from solid wood, these 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 instantly hidden from view whenever the use mode is switched.

What's more

Some of the rooms in Haven House also feature custom closet doors that were designed specifically to encourage healthy habits.

Each set of four doors are made of continuous pieces of exotic hardwood in a layout that looks uncomfortably wrong 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.

More custom woodwork designed to hide clutter is found in the convertible desk-beds

Closets are not the only way to hide clutter. Convertible beds (look in Furnishings for copy)

Also spaces built to encourage specific placement / behavour Example: Bedside tables in Rooms 6 & 7. Side benefit: Helps promote harmony / Avoids bothering the roommate Primary benefit: Promotes good sleep hygiene by placing the phone, which is both physically and smbolically important // helping to create both a physical and mental separation

On the contrary, a well-ordered space can lead to a well-ordered mind, helping people to focus and

It is also beneficial for trauma recovery to keep one's environment clean, but also well-organized.

Small, well-organized environments are ideal for trauma recovery.

Highly engineered environments that subtly/transparently encourage healthy habits, including organization. (Important to reduce anxiety and stress, lead to more ordered thinking, prevent distraction) Connected to health and harmony in Haven House, as clutter for one can become a problem to many,

Several features throughout have been designed to encourage healthy habits.

Haven House has massive amounts of storage, both communal and individual. Double occupancy rooms have oversized closets as well as dedicated furniture for each person.

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

Since Cloud Nine Studios is built for individual living, this is primarily achieved through extensive soundproofing between units and the strict enforcement of the noise level policy. Outside, wide pathways and oversized common outdoor areas mean residents won't ever be forced uncomfortably close to each other. Plus, 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. Finally, having the bicycle storage and communal trash bins located out of sight of the main living area helps prevent conflicts that arise from other residents' use of these amenities.

Shared Harmony

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.