Building Hope: Co-producing Trauma-Informed Space with Women in the Justice System

Framed within Lefebvre’s concepts of “differential space” and “autogestion”, this article examines how coproduced design processes enabled an architectural team and women with lived experience of criminalization to materialize principles of trauma-informed practice in the design of Hope Street, a residential alternative to custody in Southampton, UK. The research analyzed outputs from consultation workshops with women impacted by the justice system and/or homelessness and a focus group with the Hope Street architectural team. Findings reveal the process of conceptualizing and materializing spatial design based on trauma-informed principles offering the potentiality to redefine traditionally institutional spaces as places of sanctuary and healing as opposed to places of punishment.