Mobile Refuge Rooms Featured in Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial in New York: Making Home
The Mobile Refuge Room is a short-term transitional housing prototype designed to improve the experience for people who are reentering their communities from prison.
Each room provides privacy and spatial support, equipped with a Murphy bed, a desk, and storage for clothing and valuables. The rooms are flat-packed, quickly assembled, and can be clustered in configurations within a space, adapting to each individual’s personal preferences. The Cooper Hewitt exhibit features two prototypes, a living room layout adjacent to the rooms, and information about the necessary services required onsite to provide holistic support for people in transition from incarceration.
Project Details
Project: New Construction, Commercial (reentry direct services) and Residential (short-term mental health and substance use beds)
Location: Oakland, CA and New York, NY
Status: Prototype completed 2019, exhibiting “Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial” November 2, 2024 through August 10, 2025
Spaces for: Reentry, Specialized Housing
Project Partners: Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS), Elevator Works, Laney College Restoring our Communities (ROC) Program, Laney College FabLab, College of Alameda Fab Lab, FabCity Oakland
Designing the Mobile Refuge Room
These modular units offer what traditional reentry housing sorely lacks: dignity through privacy and personal agency. Developed in collaboration with formerly incarcerated students at Laney College in Oakland, California, each room has many features allowing residents to finally shape their own environment after years of institutional control.
The rooms can be installed anywhere — from auditoriums to vacant floors in existing office buildings. The vision is that governments and nonprofits working to ensure successful reentry will pair the rooms with wrap-around support services, such as job training, mental health counseling, and educational resources, to create a comprehensive pathway home. DJDS is currently seeking a program provider to install four to twelve rooms to be utilized in an operational reentry program. If you are interested, please contact Allan Co for more information: aco [at] designingjustice [dot] org.
