Architecture should promote safety, healing, dignity, and community. Unfortunately, traumatic events often result in people distorting architectural places within their minds and turning certain environments into emotional triggers. Traumatic events and the built environment are inseparable, so it is crucial to understand how trauma informs the way humans interact with architecture. Place is one of the immediately tangible associations people can make with a less tangible trauma, and, as people try to make sense of confusing traumatic events, place is something they can easily latch onto. However, this may result in difficult post-traumatic emotions with certain spatial settings. What should be the future of those environments? How can security and hope be restored within individuals, communities, and architecture?
Architecture as refuge can take on a variety of forms since refuge may be found within a place, temporarily beyond a boundary, or permanently in a foreign place. Refuge can be found in one’s identity, adaptation of place, and/or relocation from place. Seeking refuge is a necessity for survival and often not a choice, so it is crucial to provide dignity and security. This refuge may be from mass violence, forced displacement, domestic violence, or medical trauma. Trauma-informed design seeks to address the realities of our world and restore dignity as a human right. Architecture should begin to address the reality of its role in traumatic events and work to heal communities and individuals. Since identity is a crucial factor of facing and overcoming trauma, how can people and communities re-establish identity through architecture? Much like in therapeutic settings, how can distorted beliefs induced by trauma be recognized and restored so that environmental triggers can be withdrawn? While architecture alone cannot relieve the world from trauma, architecture can choose to provide refuge and promote healing. Furthermore, this research begins to ask: How can architecture provide refuge and promote healing? What psychological and physiological needs are prevalent in refuge? Can the fields of architecture and social work overlap to develop optimal places of refuge for those seeking it? How do people and communities re-establish identity, security, and dignity through architecture?