People experiencing homelessness often face recoveries complicated by mental disability, substance abuse, and trauma. They can withdraw into self‐imposed isolation and avoid important support services, making recovery more difficult. Affirmative relationships developed in part within the designed settings of transitional housing may play a significant role in countering these tendencies. The presence and effectiveness of communal gathering spaces in supportive housing must be better understood as a design problem, particularly given users' diverse ages, ethnicities, and health needs, which effectively inclusive environments must accommodate. In recent decades, architecture as a discipline has pivoted toward more human‐centered approaches, with the individual's dignity and well‐being at center stage. This study applies social science‐based research methods and spatial analytics to the end of understanding how specific interior spaces, key to the recovery process, might be improved. The authors posit that the success of resident gathering spaces intended to prompt and support resident relationships and decrease users' feelings of marginalization may be influenced by a range of sociospatial design factors (i.e. visibility and ease of access, adjacencies, access to daylight and views, furniture types, and aesthetics) together with facility policies and events programming. The authors use a combination of space syntax, surveys, and qualitative methods to analyze two contrasting layouts in supportive housing locations in the UK and Florida, drawing conclusions intended to steer the development of typologies for similar facilities.

Parents with children are a growing segment of the U.S. homeless population. Sources indicate that homeless shelter dormitory bedrooms are highly crowded with low privacy, which may affect quality of experience that lead to residents' perceived loss of control and helplessness. Research suggests that personal environmental control features may lessen these effects and increase a resident's sense of internal control (that outcomes are based on one's own behavior). Internal control can support one's motivation to seek a permanent place to live and find employment. To enhance the sense of internal control, the author of this study altered a homeless shelter bedroom, adding a series of control features including lighting for reading, bed curtains, and increased storage. This case study then examined perceptions of bedroom controls, and the features' effects on the sense of internal control and related issues. The two shelter parents perceived that their unaltered bedrooms were crowded, lacked privacy, and were stressful because their possessions could not be stored. Their children did not wish to stay in the bedrooms, and reportedly increased misbehavior. The altered bedroom was perceived as more private and less crowded than the unaltered room (with unchanged square footage), and supported the parents' need for child monitoring and ability to act as an authority figure. One parent reported that the bedroom reduced her stress level, and preliminary data suggests her sense of internal control increased. Observations of increased territoriality and personalization further supported this finding.

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Jill Pable, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Interior Design at Florida State University and a National Council for Interior Design Qualification‐certified interior designer. Her educational background includes B.S. and M.F.A. degrees in Interior Design and a Ph.D. degree in Instructional Technology with specialization in architecture. Her professional work includes residential, hospitality, healthcare, and office projects completed within her own firm as well as with Universal Studios Florida. She is the past chairperson of the Interior Design Continuing Education Council and past Interior Design Educators Council (IDEC) national secretary/treasurer. She will serve as the President of IDEC in May 2009. Her research interests include interior design pedagogy and issues of social justice in design, and her educational papers and creative works have six times been awarded “Best Presentation” at international and regional IDEC Conferences. Her publications Interior Design: Practical Strategies for Teaching and Learning (coauthored with Katherine Ankerson) and Sketching Interiors at the Speed of Thought are available through Fairchild Books.

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