Stephen Parker, AIA, NOMA, NCARB, LEED AP, Architect and mental and behavioral health planner, Stantec Architecture (Arlington, Virginia)
As a mental health planner at Stantec, Stephen Parker is focused on advocating, educating, and elevating mental health through design. In the past year, he’s designed or master planned more than 1,000 mental health beds and helped open seven facilities.
Additionally, he has presented at more than 20 events and collaborated on 15 articles, papers, or interviews across multiple platforms, sharing new ideas and best practices across North America, Australasia, and Europe.
Among his most recent project work is the 33,000-square-foot Nunavut Recovery Centre in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada, a generational trauma and addiction treatment facility serving the Inuit communities of the Canadian Arctic that’s scheduled to open this year, where he served as behavioral health planner and mental health subject matter expert.
He also recently collaborated on the Judson Center, an autism treatment campus expansion in Berkley, Mich., sharing best practices for neurodevelopmental populations. As a mental health design advisor for the St. Joseph’s Healthcare Masterplan in London, Ontario, Canada, he led the planning for the system’s mental health facilities across multiple campuses.
Beyond his project work, he’s busy sharing his knowledge and experience with peer and community organizations to further spread better practices while also advocating for industry-wide change.
His development of the Stantec ZenDen design has melded education and mental health typologies with sensory-enabled architectureas, a mobile exhibit and research platform. Having exhibited twice, the latest iteration of the unit is wrapping up real-world use in a behavioral health counseling suite for a school district in Texas. It’s set to be further studied in a higher education setting later this year with a white paper to follow.
He’s also actively driving research to guide better design solutions as well as support the next generation of healthcare designers, including working with Texas A&M University students to pioneer studies on crisis care design, integrating clinical outcomes with trauma-informed best practices. Supporting Clemson University’s Architecture+Health studios and research for behavioral health in emergency settings, he’s participated in design critiques and leveraged multiple vendor relationships to support the program’s work.
Last but not least, Parker co-founded the DrawnOut! Mental Health Sketch Workshop series. The interactive sketching workshop. intended to defy stigma by design, pairs empathy exercises with evidence-based design best practices and has been implemented across the country and in Europe.
Combining his passion for behavioral health design with his dedication to working across sectors and professional organizations, Parker is delivering meaningful change that spans beyond the healthcare industry.
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