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
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.
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.
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.