Wellness Design: Trauma-informed Indicators

AIA|LA Design For Dignity Roundtable:
Wellness Design: Trauma-informed Indicators

REGISTER HERE. (Free w/ advance RSVP)

As a follow-up to our 5th annual “Design for Dignity” conference, we’re organizing a series of roundtables to further advance the various initiates introduced during our break-out discussions.

This roundtable will serve as a forum to further explore the topic outlined below and identify pro-active next-steps to implement ideas on how we can best address our housing crisis.

Wellness Design: Trauma-informed Indicators

The goal of this follow-up session is to identify and/or develop shareable, adoptable guidelines to promote intentional implementation of trauma-informed design practices in the design industry. In this session, we will seek to educate ourselves on existing bodies of knowledge and available resources pertaining to trauma-informed design, and work to develop a set of principles that can be shared and adopted. We will assemble a team to develop and/or promote a resource that bridges evidence and precedent with practice in a distilled format. In addition to relying on evidence-based research, wellness design is unique in that it must listen and respond to the communities being served. The voices and stories of individuals with lived experience can serve not only to assist designers in evaluating and revising design approaches, but as a valuable communication tool to grow public support and commitment to addressing community needs. Part two of our follow-up will be to further educate ourselves on existing avenues for gathering and sharing stories of lived experience, and work to increase access to such content for the broader community of stakeholders working to solve the housing and homelessness crisis.

Roundtable Participants:
Anne Riggs, AIA, CASp – Associate, David Baker Architects
J. Davis Harte, PhD – Educator, Advocate & Speaker, Design for Human Health, Boston Architectural College

REGISTER HERE. (Free w/ advance RSVP)

Background info:

Wellness Design, a term we are using to incorporate a range of strategies to fight the causes and effects of systemic injustice and trauma in the built environment, is an emerging field of study and practice which is beginning to gain critical mass. Trauma-informed design, in particular, is an emerging field as it relates to housing. This session identified several approaches for how AIA LA can contribute to the advancement of the wellness design field, including trauma-informed design and gender-safe spaces, and educate the industry and stakeholders.

During the first breakout session at “Design For Dignity”, we identified a list of questions for follow up:

1) How can we promote the inclusion of existing and emerging professionals as a resource throughout the design process? For example, communication and implicit bias coaches, and trauma-informed designers with an understanding of evidence-based design strategies for trauma-informed spaces.

2) How can we communicate the value of community inclusion to private and public sector decision makers? How can we expand the concept of wellness design to entire neighborhoods?

3) How can we harness the power of evidence-based research without inadvertently incentivizing “cookie-cutter” solutions over creative and unique responses to community needs? Can we develop an evidence-based process as opposed to pre-defined design solutions. For example, can we incorporate ethnographic studies during the programming phase (more deliberate and informed user focus groups etc).

4) How can the AIA step up to offer training such as implicit bias, community engagement, etc.?

5) How can we mobilize individuals with lived experience to share their stories, humanizing the issues facing our communities and empowering designers to practice empathy and creativity?

During the second session at “Design For Dignity”, we distilled a tandem set of action items for follow-up. The common theme of these action items is education and communication.

1) There is currently a lot of great work being done on wellness design and trauma-informed design, but one of the challenges we identified is the difficulty of packaging this body of knowledge into an easily digestible and shareable format. Part one of our follow-up will be to further educate ourselves on existing bodies of knowledge, and work to develop a set of principles that can be shared and adopted. This may involve contributing to and promoting an existing rubric, such as International Well Building Institute guidelines. We will assemble a team to develop and/or promote a resource that bridges evidence and precedent with practice in a distilled format.

2) In addition to relying on evidence-based research, wellness design is unique in that it must listen and respond to the communities being served. The voices and stories of individuals with lived experience can serve not only to assist designers in evaluating and revising design approaches, but as a valuable communication tool to grow public support and commitment to addressing community needs. Part two of our follow-up will be to further educate ourselves on existing avenues for gathering and sharing stories of lived experience, and work to increase access to such content for the broader community of stakeholders working to solve the housing and homelessness crisis. This could be through AIA’s online education platform, a podcast, or similar format.