Unplanned Interiors as Care Trauma-Informed Design and Everyday Spatial Practices in Women’s Refuges

Abstract

Women’s refuges rely on adaptable, unplanned interiors as a critical component of trauma-informed care for women and children escaping domestic and family violence. This essay examines the spatial dynamics of planned and unplanned interiors through a feminist lens, conceptualising the refuge not as a fixed design but as a living system co-created through acts of maintenance, adjustment, and relational care. By focusing on the spatial interior and challenging assumptions about design quality and spatial order, the study positions design as an everyday, collaborative process shaped by workers and residents.

Drawing on feminist design theory, trauma-informed care, and feminist care ethics, the essay argues for greater recognition of workers’ spatial practices and the informal, often improvised transformations that respond to diverse cultural, emotional, and familial needs. Based on site visits to twenty-six refuges throughout New South Wales, Australia, and interviews with forty-eight workers, the research identifies strategies that support safety and recovery, including creating zones for retreat, softening institutional features, and introducing familiar domestic cues. Findings highlight the significance of unplanned interiors in enabling flexibility and choice, resisting prescriptive notions of safety, and accommodating evolving needs. The essay positions trauma-informed interior design as an adaptive, collaborative process that centres care, agency, and lived experience within spatial practice.