Homeless Shelter Design: Considerations for Shaping Shelters and the Public Realm Book

Design contributes to how we see our cities and, through its connection with function, it determines how we live within our cities. This book provides insight into one aspect of the interconnection: the design and function of shelters for homeless indivduals. It evolved out of an applied research project – a fusion between the disciplines of environmental design and social work – that sought to better appreciate design possibilities for a homeless shelter in downtown Calgary, Alberta Canada. Out initial intention was to understand one Calgary shelter, and various options of redevelopment and expansion that its administrators might consider. But through a deeper analysis, a broader story emerged. We found little scholarship on the question of how to design and plan shelters for homeless people. And the research we undertook for this project – analyzing potential principles of design for sixty-three shelters in twenty-five cities in three countries – struck us as relevant beyond the immediate city of Calgary. We began the research process for this book by interviewing over fifty key informants who had international reputations in the operation or design of shelters for the homeless. Based on these converations, as well as extensive reading, we visited shelters for homeless people throughout the world, interviewing staff and the people who used shelter services. Through those contacts, we found further shelters we could examine. The principles that began to emerge were not only useful to our work inCalgary, but also, we concluded, could be helpful to people interested in the design of shelters for the homeless in general. And so the book studies the design considerations of one particular shelter in Calgary from our precedent research within and beyond the city of Calgary. These two things – the specifcs as to Calgary and the more general principles that emerge in relation to Calgary and those precedents beyond it – are the main subject matter of this book.Read More