Suicide in the Barracks: Architecture and Social Connection in Military Housing
| dc.contributor.advisor | Gillem, Mark | |
| dc.contributor.author | Kelly, Sean-Michael | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2020-09-24T17:22:42Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2020-09-24T17:22:42Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2020-09-24 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Military barracks serve the same function today as they did in the first century—housing an Army’s soldiers. Their form has stayed less consistent than their function, however. Since 1973—and the end of the Draft—the Army needs to convince soldiers to volunteer and re-enlist. Barracks design became part of that enticement, shifting to a philosophy centered on individual satisfaction at the expense of community. Barracks designers moved from shared rooms to private rooms, made those private rooms larger, and deleted communal social gathering space to re-apportion square footage to the individual. In 1999, a second influential event shaped barracks design—terrorism. To guard against the backpack bomb, prescriptive antiterrorism requirements all but forced designers to create clear zones around the barracks, void of social amenities. In addition, the standards saw exterior doors as a blast hazard and effectively eliminated outdoor balcony-access designs. Throughout this dissertation, I focus exclusively on these two design drivers: the military's aim to improve retention through design and to ensure security through surveillance. I argue that both shifts resulted in negative consequences for soldier social health, and that social health influences individual retention, physical well-being, and suicide. Using environment-behavior theory as a foundation, I claim that architecture's influence occurs through the social experience of place. I analyze social, emotional, and physical health survey data, along with official Army re-enlistment and suicide records to test these claims. The data show serious cracks in the current design strategy. Newer barracks actually perform worse from a social performance perspective. Residents of the newest barracks are statistically less likely to benefit from social trust, belonging, and support. And as their social health declines, so too does their emotional and physical health. They are more depressed, more angry, more bothered by poor sleep, have lower self-esteem, and have fewer ways to effectively deal with stress. The social ills of designing for terrorism and individual retention also extend into soldier outcomes. Service members assigned to newer, post-antiterrorism barracks (those built after 2004) are less likely to re-enlist and have a nearly 3-fold increase in the probability of committing suicide. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1794/25683 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | University of Oregon | |
| dc.rights | All Rights Reserved. | |
| dc.subject | Barracks Design | en_US |
| dc.subject | Emotional Health | en_US |
| dc.subject | Social Cohesion | en_US |
| dc.subject | Social Health | en_US |
| dc.subject | Suicide | en_US |
| dc.title | Suicide in the Barracks: Architecture and Social Connection in Military Housing | |
| dc.type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Department of Architecture | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | University of Oregon | |
| thesis.degree.level | doctoral | |
| thesis.degree.name | Ph.D. |
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