Designing for Dignity: Trauma-Informed Strategies at YSS Ember Youth Recovery Campus

Article read time: 5 minutes

The environments we inhabit leave lasting impressions on how we think, feel and move through the world. For those who have experienced trauma, these impressions are even more profound. Long before the mind has a chance to consciously process a space, the body is already reacting — registering cues of safety, danger, welcome or exclusion.

Trauma-informed design begins with this reality. It combines principles of trauma-informed care with the design process, recognizing that architecture and landscape architecture are not neutral backdrops but active participants in healing. For RDG, this approach came to life at the YSS Ember Youth Recovery Campus in Cambridge, Iowa, where the challenge was to create a safe, supportive and restorative home for young people on their recovery journey. The result is a campus shaped by empathy and evidence, where buildings and landscapes work in harmony to provide dignity, autonomy and connection.

What Is Trauma-Informed Design?

Though the concept is still evolving, trauma-informed design emerges from the broader framework of trauma-informed care, which emphasizes safety, empowerment and the avoidance of re-traumatization. Trauma-informed design translates those principles into physical environments, recognizing that spatial layout, light, sound, materials and access to nature can either ease or exacerbate stress.

Research identifies several recurring principles: Safety and security, both physical and psychological, are foundational, achieved through clear sightlines, manageable scale and protective transitions. Predictability and clarity in wayfinding help reduce disorientation and cognitive overload. Agency and autonomy are equally critical: trauma often robs individuals of control, and design can restore it by offering choices in how to move, where to sit or how to personalize space. Connection to nature plays a particularly powerful role. Studies show that daylight, views of greenery and access to outdoor environments can lower stress and improve mental health outcomes. Materials and sensory qualities also matter: soft lighting, sound absorption and tactile finishes all help create environments that support self-regulation. Finally, trauma-informed design emphasizes social connection and dignity, creating spaces that feel welcoming rather than institutional, and support community without sacrificing privacy.

Though the field is still developing, evidence continues to grow. Research on recovery from homelessness, PTSD treatment and community resilience all affirm that environments designed with these principles can positively affect well-being and healing. This broader context provides the foundation for Ember. With a shared understanding of trauma-informed design, the project team translated these ideas into a real-world environment that blends architecture, landscape architecture and community.

Safety, Dignity and the Role of Architecture

Safety is a cornerstone of trauma-informed design, but safety alone is not enough. Spaces must allow people to feel secure without feeling controlled; protected without being confined. Architecture provides one of the clearest opportunities to strike that balance.

At Ember, cabins are designed to feel like homes rather than institutions. Kitchens sit at the heart of each cabin, creating warm hubs where meals and conversations unfold while also giving staff clear visibility to residents’ rooms. Hallways are organized to be simple and direct, reducing the stress that comes with confusion or disorientation. The cabins themselves adopt Y-shaped plans, breaking down long building elevations into more approachable, human-scaled forms.

Architecture also creates spaces of retreat. Quiet rooms with soft lighting, sound-absorbing finishes, and comfortable furnishings give residents opportunities to decompress when the outside world feels overwhelming. Nearly every building frames views of prairie grasses or woodlands, providing a steady reminder of nature’s grounding presence. In these ways, Ember demonstrates how architecture can support both safety and dignity, laying the foundation for recovery.

This foundation sets the stage for another essential piece of trauma-informed design: restoring agency. Once residents feel safe, they can begin to reclaim the autonomy that trauma often strips away. That shift happens powerfully in the landscape.

Autonomy, Agency, and the Power of Landscape

If architecture anchors safety, landscape architecture expands freedom. Trauma often robs people of control, and design can begin to restore that sense of agency by creating environments that offer choice. The surrounding 50-acre property at Ember — most of it preserved under a conservation easement — becomes part of the recovery journey. Paths, gardens and framed views create opportunities for residents to explore at their own pace and on their own terms.

Outdoor spaces are shaped with a delicate balance of security and autonomy. Clear sightlines and intuitive wayfinding provide reassurance, while subtle boundaries such as walkways edging backyards or fire lanes encircling gathering areas, establish safe limits without feeling restrictive. Cabin porches act as protective thresholds, giving residents semi-private spaces that connect to the larger campus. The sensory garden, with its tactile plantings and seating, offers residents a calming space to reflect or simply breathe.

Perhaps most importantly, the landscape invites self-expression. The community garden allows residents to cultivate plants, literally leaving their mark on the land. Future opportunities for youth-created art and sculpture continue this theme, reinforcing that Ember is not just a place to stay but a place to belong.

By restoring agency through landscape, Ember builds on the foundation set by architecture. And neither could be fully realized without a collaborative process that integrates every discipline and every voice.

Collaboration and the Integration of Care

Trauma-informed design is holistic by nature. It does not live in architecture alone, or in landscape architecture alone, but in the way all elements — buildings, outdoor spaces, lighting, interiors — come together. Collaboration ensures those elements are not competing but reinforcing one another, and it also brings the voices of staff, clients and residents into the design process.

At Ember, this integration is visible in both grand gestures and fine details. Lighting throughout the campus supports natural daily rhythms, avoiding the harshness of glare in the morning or the institutional feel of dim, shadowed corridors. Group rooms are designed for comfort, with acoustics and temperature carefully tuned to make conversations feel safe. Outdoor patios, which overlook the surrounding prairie, accommodate a wide range of activities, from quiet individual reflection to group connection and fellowship.

Because of this interdisciplinary approach, the entire campus feels cohesive. Residents move seamlessly from indoor spaces that provide safety and clarity to outdoor environments that encourage agency and expression. Staff can support recovery more effectively in spaces designed to ease stress rather than add to it. Collaboration doesn’t only make the design better — it makes the environment itself a partner in healing. This integration underscores a broader truth: trauma-informed design is most successful when it is comprehensive, drawing on multiple disciplines and perspectives. And it is this breadth of collaboration that allows Ember to model lessons that extend far beyond its campus.

Designing for Humanity

The YSS Ember Youth Recovery Campus illustrates the power of trauma-informed design to shape environments that heal. Architecture establishes safety and dignity, landscape architecture restores agency and autonomy and collaboration integrates those elements into a cohesive whole. The result is a campus where young people not only recover but also find dignity, belonging and hope. The lessons from Ember are not limited to recovery facilities. Schools, housing and civic spaces all benefit when design prioritizes safety, choice and connection. Trauma-informed design is not a specialized toolset, but rather a mindset — one that makes communities healthier and more compassionate.

Environments matter. They shape how we feel, how we behave and how we heal. At Ember, RDG’s architects and landscape architects embraced that responsibility, creating a place where every decision — from the layout of a cabin to the planting of prairie grasses — reinforces care. And if design has the power to do that here, it has the power to do so everywhere.