7Hills Day Center Complex, a business-hours refuge for homeless populations
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Health
/
Future
Most progress toward ending homelessness is accomplished during the day. The day center complex is a business-hours refuge for homeless populations seeking one-stop services. Services include counseling, provisioning, meals, personal hygiene, mail delivery, job search, light medical assistance, and shelter. The center incorporates best practices in ‘trauma-informed design’, accounting for a population that routinely suffers criminal transgressions and personal indignities.
Still a developing sub-discipline in care facility urbanism, four key principles guide the trauma-informed approach. The center should be restorative, welcoming and inviting, governed by an ethic of hospitality. Since being ‘indoors’ can be stressful for homeless individuals, the day center offers a variety of indoor/outdoor and public/private spaces without compromising staff’s need to monitor clients’ behavior. The complex should be perceived by clients as a safe, calming, and equitable place “spatially available” to all. And the day center should incorporate connections to the natural world since vegetation, natural light, and air provide important biophilic functions that reduce stress, enhance mood, and elevate sensory enjoyment.
Trauma-informed design demands a layered organization to accommodate varying degrees of engagement desired by users. Full engagement is sometimes a long-term process. The day center is one component in an ecosystem of nearby homeless service providers, including apartments and a new homeless transition village. The complex consists of an operations support building, a day center, a memorial grove to local homeless citizens who have passed, a community garden, an outdoor porch and mailbox kiosk, and bus stop/sitting area. This landscape of services extends to the interior to spaces for living, dining, laundry, a store for free-of-charge provisions, and showers. Just a mile from downtown, the complex’s urbanism projects familiarity by re-scaling domestic associations and other tropes of hospitality within the context of an institutional program along an auto-dominated arterial.
Finally, the day center projects a sense of dignity and orientation that stems from its economy of means, where frugality is important both economically and socially. Spaces are easy to navigate and invite further socialization. They offer opportunity for choice reinforcing individual’s sense of identity and autonomy within a cooperative setting. The facility’s massing and scale projects familiarity by re-scaling domestic associations and other tropes of hospitality within the context of an institutional program and its location on an unmemorable five-lane commercial corridor.
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View of 7Hills Complex entry
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Entry to building with porch beyond
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
The Porch provides a place for individuals who experience stressed over interior spaces.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Inside the Center a series of courtyards provide connection to the natural world.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
The living area provides a semi-domestic space with porch, window seats, and a fireplace.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
The eating and gathering space have high ceilings and feature light fixtures.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Natural light in all spaces including the store maintains high-quality spaces throughout.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
The center serves the quotidian needs through laundry room, locker storage, and provisioning.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
View of quotidian service areas of center
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Care landscapes include a community garden and memorial grove.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
7Hills is located at the downtown edge with transportation and housing services.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
An extra-long bus stop bench anchors an inviting entrance to the complex.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Activities of daily living are accommodated in both indoor and outdoor facilities.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
The Memorial Grove remembering homeless citizens provides an outdoor respite.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
The Porch provides a place for individuals who experience stress over interior spaces.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Entry into the Center is adjacent to the front porch and mailboxes.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
The Porch creates a discrete space for receiving services and socializing.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Inside the Center a series of courtyards provide connection to the natural world.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
The living area provides a semi-domestic space with porch, window seats, and a fireplace.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
The eating and gathering space have high ceilings and feature light fixtures.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
The central service spine runs the length of the Center linking program areas and the outdoors.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
The Center serves the quotidian needs through laundry room, locker storage, and provisioning.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Natural light in all spaces including the store maintains high-quality spaces throughout.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
The Center is developed in two phases due to funding: an operations center and a staff center.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Porous frontage, generous window area, and playful forms are welcoming to individuals.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
The Center offers balance, choice, and clarity—important principles in trauma-informed design.
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Care landscapes include a community garden and memorial grove.
Fayetteville, AR
U.S.A.
7hills Homeless Center
1200 mq
Claude M. Terral III, Project Architect
Stephen Luoni, Director; Garrett Grelle, Project Designer; Kacper Lastowiecki, Project Designer; Isabelle Troutman, Student Intern
University of Arkansas Community Design Center
Curriculum
The University of Arkansas Community Design Center is an outreach center of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, and one of a few university-based teaching offices in the United States dedicated to delivering urban design work. Originated in 1995, the center advances creative development in Arkansas through design, research, and education solutions. Nationally recognized in public-interest design, the center has its own downtown facilities and 5-6 professional design/planning staff, some who also teach. Beyond the focus on urban projects, UACDC has developed eight place-making platforms to shape civic design and public policy at state and municipal levels. These interdisciplinary platforms include 'missing middle housing,' 'agricultural urbanism,' 'transit-oriented development,' 'context-sensitive street design,' 'watershed urbanism,' 'big box urbanism,' 'smart growth,' and 'low impact development,' vocabularies which are locally articulated but hold universal currency.
