This research-led design studio focuses on complex ‘Transition spaces’ for high-needs individuals, specifically investigating the intersection of architecture, care, and complex mental health. Through this deeply personal and critical exploration, I am challenged to confront the ethical, emotional, and architectural implications of designing for those navigating vulnerability, trauma, and systemic neglect.  A large part of this process involved maintaining a reflective diary, allowing me to track the emotional impact of the research and acknowledge the weight of designing within such intimate and often invisible realms of suffering. As a studio cohort, we engaged with psychiatrists, and visited both government and non-government organizations such as The Bridge, Fountain House, and the New York Office of Mental Health, as well as facilities in Australia, allowing for comparative insights into mental healthcare systems across geographies.

My area of inquiry centers on the ‘Intergenerational inheritance of depression’, with a specific focus on women aged 18–40 experiencing Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), gestational stress, and perinatal or postpartum depression. Informed by medical literature, epigenetic studies, and mental health reports, I developed a nuanced understanding of how depression transcends the individual—carried across generations through biology, behavior, and social context.

The urban environment significantly amplifies mental health vulnerabilities, women in densely populated, fast-paced urban settings like New York City face immense pressures from career demands, domestic responsibilities, social isolation, motherhood, financial constraints, limited access to mental health services, and substance abuse risk. Moreover, contemporary urban processes like gentrification exacerbate these issues. When mapping gentrification patterns, poverty levels, education gaps, and substance abuse against mental health data, Harlem in Manhattan emerges as a critical site. According to the 2024 MDD report, Harlem faces notable disparities in mental health treatment accessibility, primarily affecting its historically marginalized Hispanic and African-American communities, making it a compelling and meaningful location for intervention.

Instead of placing the burden on mothers to “go” to a space, this brings support into the rhythm of daily life. The proposal reimagines urban environments as networks of therapeutic potential—embedding moments of care, rest, and reflection into familiar, everyday spaces. The first phase focuses on decentralizing support through community-based mental health micro-interventions in laundromats, beauty salons, libraries, parks, and transit spaces—places where women already spend time. Here, the staff members can be trained by mental health government and non-government organizations to counsel these women. The second phase activates underused urban lots as “soft clinics,” informal, intimate spaces where therapeutic rituals, communal storytelling, and intergenerational care exchanges can unfold. The third phase offers a gentle bridge into formal healthcare systems, for those who need it, by gradually building psychological readiness and trust.

This layered system of care acknowledges that healing doesn’t happen behind institutional walls—it unfolds in moments of pause, ritual, and shared vulnerability. These interventions don’t aim to “solve” depression, but to soften the environments in which it persists, and to reposition architecture as a quiet, continuous participant in collective healing. Transition spaces—those often-overlooked thresholds between institutions and community—become not just sites of passage, but opportunities for dignity, empathy, and renewal.