TINI Studio integrates research, design, policy, and advocacy to bring trauma-informed principles into practice. Our framework is grounded in years of interdisciplinary collaboration and guided by insights from neuroscience, public health, and urban planning.

We focus on four pillars:

Research & Data Translation: Advancing evidence-based studies that connect environmental factors with mental health, safety, and regulation.

Policy & Systems Change: Developing tools like the Trauma-Informed Zoning Overlay District (TIZOD) and the TINI Design Scorecard to help cities, universities, and planners embed trauma-informed principles into policy.

Design & Planning Practice: Partnering with communities to create trauma-informed neighborhood plans, form-based codes, and built environment prototypes that prioritize well-being and equity.

Advocacy & Education: Building awareness through storytelling, public engagement, and interdisciplinary training so that trauma-informed design becomes the norm, not the exception.

What We Believe

Healing is environmental. Safety, trust, and belonging can be built or broken through design.

Equity is essential. Communities most affected by trauma deserve first access to resources, investment, and decision-making power.

Connection is prevention. When people feel connected to each other, to nature, and to their community their health outcomes improve.

Systems must collaborate. Healing requires planners, healthcare professionals, educators, and civic leaders to work together.

Design is a form of care. Every building, park, and street carries the power to heal or harm and that choice begins at the drawing board.

Reimagining the Built Environment for Healing

Traditional planning often focuses on physical form: streets, buildings, and zoning. The TINI Systems Framework expands that lens to include nervous system regulation, sensory experience, social connection, and equity as measurable outcomes of good design. Every neighborhood has the potential to function like an ecosystem of care where healthcare, education, housing, and public space work together to prevent harm and promote resilience. The TINI Systems Framework maps these relationships and creates the infrastructure for healing to happen at scale.

At its core, the framework connects five interdependent layers:

Research & Evaluation
Grounded in neuroscience and public health, we use data to understand how the built environment impacts emotional well-being, safety, and community cohesion.

Design & Planning
Translating trauma-informed principles into physical form through sensory-friendly design, biophilic elements, green corridors, lighting, color, and space planning that calm the nervous system.

Policy & Governance
Embedding trauma-informed values into zoning, funding, and decision-making through tools like the Trauma-Informed Zoning Overlay District (TIZOD) and TINI Design Scorecard.

Education & Implementation
Building the capacity of planners, designers, students, and health professionals through training, university partnerships, and fieldwork at Health & Learning Nodes (HLNs).

Community Feedback & Adaptation
Using participatory workshops, storytelling, and sensory mapping to ensure community voices shape the ongoing evolution of neighborhoods—making the process cyclical, not linear.

Together, these layers create a living system that continually learns from itself, evolving based on feedback and lived experience.

Health & Learning Nodes (HLNs): Anchors for Resilience

Within the TINI Systems Framework, Health & Learning Nodes (HLNs) act as the anchors that connect research, education, and community life. HLNs are not just physical spaces, they are ecosystems of access.

Each node brings together schools, universities, clinics, parks, and community hubs to form a network of healing infrastructure. These nodes serve as local demonstration sites where trauma-informed design, public health data, and community partnerships intersect.‘

Elements of the Health & Learning Node

Colocation: By bringing mental health, education, childcare, and civic services together, HLNs reduce barriers to care and create a sense of trust and accessibility.

Green Connectivity: HLNs are linked by safe pedestrian routes, green corridors, and public gathering spaces, turning entire cities into networks of regulation and connection.

Applied Research: Each node contributes data on how built environment design influences health and equity outcomes, feeding insights back into the larger system for continuous improvement.

How the Framework Works

Assessment: Identify environmental and social risk factors, such as noise, isolation, disinvestment, ACEs, or limited green space that impact stress and health.

Integration: Develop trauma-informed design and planning strategies tailored to those findings.

Collaboration: Bring together planners, public health professionals, residents, and universities to co-create interventions.

Implementation: Apply these strategies through zoning overlays, form-based codes, and neighborhood redevelopment.

Evaluation: Measure how interventions affect nervous system regulation, sense of safety, and community well-being—and use that data to refine the next phase.

This cyclical process ensures that every intervention leads to new insight, building momentum toward long-term systems change.

Why It Matters

Trauma is not only psychological, it’s spatial. It lives in our environments as much as in our bodies. When our surroundings are overstimulating, unsafe, or isolating, the body stays in a state of survival. But when environments are designed to support calm, connection, and access- healing becomes possible.

The TINI Studio Systems Framework repositions planning and design as acts of care. It gives cities and institutions a roadmap to build places that not only look good, but feel safe, reduce stress, and promote well-being.