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PHOTOGRAPHY: © GLen McDowell

Ohana Center, in Monterey, California, engages its hillside site.

A child may survive violence, homelessness, or other profoundly distressing circumstance, but that doesn’t mean it’s over. The stress-response system that trauma activates in the body can have long-term effects, especially for children, whose incipient development makes them extra vulnerable. With an estimated 25 percent of children in the U.S. experiencing such conditions, trauma-informed design (TID) for youth-centered environments can play an important role in helping kids heal.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, individual trauma can be defined in terms of “three E’s:” it results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that the individual experiences as physically or emotionally harmful or life-threatening, with lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being. Trauma-induced effects can include impaired concentration, organization, and/or emotional regulation; hyper-arousal to a constant state of tension, suspicion, or panic; disengagement; and difficulty relaxing, sleeping, digesting food, or finding enjoyment in life.

The experience of the environment, however, is also somatic: the body registers its surroundings before the conscious mind does. So, through careful attention to the user’s experience, architecture can help to mitigate trauma’s effects. The practice of trauma-informed design—or designing for dignity, as those who prefer a strength-based term are calling it—draws on evidence-based multidisciplinary research, including brain science, biology, social work, and architecture, to identify and minimize potential trauma triggers and to design buildings that promote self-esteem and healing. At its core, trauma-informed design entails fostering a sense of safety, through comfort, connection, and choice. Fundamentally, says Chad Holtzinger, founder of Denver-based Shopworks Archi­tec­ture, a firm that has produced a forthcoming book on the practice, “when you walk through the door, you should feel that the place is affirming and safe.”

PHOTOGRAPHY: © Michael Robinson

Murals on a freestanding wall at Boys Town (above), in Omaha, depict the institution’s history on one side and aspects of student life on the other (below).

PHOTOGRAPHY: © Daniel Patrick Muller

Four recent projects showcase trauma-informed design in youth-centered settings. The Boys Town Education Center, completed in 2023 by DLR Group, serves troubled youth (no longer boys only) in grades four through 12, on a nonprofit residential campus near Omaha, Nebraska. The Mothership (2024), by Shop­works Architecture, shelters 12- to 24-year-olds experiencing homelessness in Denver. Montage Health Ohana Center for Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health (2023), by NBBJ, provides mental-health treatment in Monterey, California. And the Parrott Creek Child and Family Services expansion (under construction), by El Dorado, is an 80-acre retreat for highly traumatized youth in Clackamas County, Oregon.

PHOTOGRAPHY: © Michael Robinson

PHOTOGRAPHY: © Michael Robinson

PHOTOGRAPHY: © Michael Robinson

The boy’s town Spirit Hall is enclosed in both clear and textured glass. Tile patterns originated as a student-group project.

Typically referred by clinical professionals, caseworkers, the juvenile justice system, or parents seeking help, a significant number of the students at Boys Town Education Center face behavioral-health and/or academic challenges. “You can’t learn if you don’t feel safe,” says Vanessa Schutte, principal and K–12 education leader in DLR Group’s Omaha office, on the decision to prioritize trauma-informed design for the new building.

An initial challenge in promoting a sense of security through design was the fact that the project is located on the main drive of the Boys Town campus, which, as a National Historic Landmark, is something of a tourist destination. The architect’s first move was to configure the three-story, 110,000-square-foot school so that students wouldn’t feel gawked at. Along the drive-facing facade, a series of bays project from the building, one per classroom; these allow large windows to be positioned perpendicular to the exterior wall so that students enjoy daylight and views out, but tour-bus passengers don’t see in. The main entrance courtyard is screened by a monumental wall, with the drive-facing side depicting elements from Boys Town’s history and the school-facing side celebrating aspects of student life in a bright mural for which students themselves were consulted.

In addition to fostering privacy from the outside, the projecting bays work spatially inside. For each classroom, they provide an alcove that serves both as a small-group breakout area and as a respite spot where a student who needs a bit of space can pull aside without having to leave the class. “Many of the students have boundary issues,” Schutte says, “so classrooms allow for more square footage per student [55 rather than the more typical 35] to help with that comfort level.”

Another key strategy for reducing anxiety makes use of transparency to let students preview spaces before entering. The glazed enclosure of Spirit Hall, a nondenominational two-story volume for prayer and contemplation that forms the heart of the school, lets potential visitors see in advance whether the hall is occupied, even as texturing of the lower portions of the glass conceals the particular identity of those within. Along the corridor wall of each classroom, a 12-foot stretch of glazing provides views in and out. Further enhancing security, careful analysis of sight lines has ensured that there are also places of refuge, concealed from the corridor and defined by a change in finishes. Transparent walls on small-group and meeting rooms express openness and connectivity, but when occupants want privacy, a swipe of a teacher’s card lowers a blind. And, for a mental reset during class changes, corridors end with windows providing a view to nature.

As with the entry mural, a particular focus for the design was the integration of art and the engagement of students in its creation. Examples include the three-dimensional installations of student-painted butterflies, also created in collaboration with the artist Watie White, and tile patterns that originated as student-group endeavors. The art projects offer “the ability for students to see themselves within the facility,” Schutte says. As “stories of coming together to help each other and to create something beautiful,” she adds, they epitomize Boys Town’s mission.

PHOTOGRAPHY: © Matt Staver

Mothership, a shelter for previously homeless youth in Denver.