Tenderloin Overdose Prevention Site
Title:
Overdose Prevention Site
Brief/Context
For my final project in my interior design class, I redesigned a space in the Tenderloin district in San Francisco to create an Overdose Prevention Site. An Overdose Prevention Sites is a facility that offers individuals with substance abuse disorders to have a safe place to use drugs under medical supervision. In California, opioid overdose related deaths were over 2000 in 2018 (https://discovery.cdph.ca.gov/CDIC/ODdash/). Facilities like these, although not yet legal in California, would help prevent overdose-related deaths as well as create direct opportunities for people to receive help and treatment. This project pushed me to design for a controversial topic that would be both be safe for health care workers and staff and comfortable and accepting for visitors of the site.
Project Tasks:
Space Planning
Drafting
Renders
Tools:
Vectorworks
Revit
Enscape
Illustrator
Process:
I began this project by reading over the building requirements of the site (with details such as eight injection stations, receptionist desks with a “safe” retreat, a chill-out room, treatment rooms, offices, and break areas for staff). Next I created a rough Parti-diagram to map out out the flow of the space. I played around with the idea of the “building inside of a building” in order to provide staff access to spaces that visitors could not enter. With this design, the waiting room, chill-out room, and supervised injection room are in the front of the building, while staff areas are towards the back and the second floor.
Site Plan/Location
As the location for the Overdose Prevention Site is in a narrow building within the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, the main obstacle was creating a functional design that fit in a linear space.
Space Plan
During the planning stage of the design, the objective was to figure out how to create a separate space for staff and visitors. The concept of a “building inside of a building” was used in order to provide staff access to spaces that visitors could not enter. With this design, the waiting room, chill-out room, and supervised injection room are in the front of the building, while staff areas are towards the back and the second floor.
Floor Plans
Renderings
Patient/Visitor Areas
Visitors to the Overdose Prevention Site would first enter the building in the waiting room. From there, they would be able to safely use drugs in the Supervised Injection Room where nurses would be readily availble. After, individuals would have the time and space they need to “chill out” as well as have access to guidance counselers.
Staff Areas
To make use of the linear space within the building, the “building within a building” concept allows for staff to have their own designated spaces that have a separate access from visitors. Staff have office rooms as well as an open loft work area that is lit by four large skylights.