A shelter from domestic violence is a physical and metaphorical site in which issues of safety and trauma, definitions of relationships and violence, meanings of gender, race, class, and sexual orientation, and concepts of empowerment and responsibility are constantly being contested and redefined by clients, staff, the board, governmental and social service agencies, and the public. As a building and architectural site, the shelter is expected to be visible, available, and pleasing to potential clients and supporters without presenting a noticeable architectural image to anyone else. The shelter is also expected to accommodate the physical and emotional needs of residents without allowing them or their trauma to become visible in the public realm and patch up the most severe damage of an abusive society without stating the problem, acknowledging the volatility of the real issues, asking for "too much" help, or providing spaces and services that are "too good" for individuals who are still, somehow, held responsible not just for their own behavior, but for the behavior of those who abuse them and others who then refuse to help.

The sites and buildings that comprise the shelter itself, though not always central to these debates, serve as a focus and container for them. While a shelter from domestic violence is in some ways "the lowest common denominator" of spaces for women -- a place almost no one would go if they could avoid it -- in my experience, shelters have also been the location of insights and transformations that would not have occurred in places that were less stressed by the gaps between conflicting expectations, competing needs, and limited resources.

To an outsider, someone who has never stayed at or worked at a domestic violence shelter, probably the strongest expectation of a domestic violence shelter is that it should be safe -- that is, provide safety for a victim from her abuser.^{Ref. 2} While the potential lethality of violent abusers is easy for most people to acknowledge, the need for a shelter to be hidden from at least some people creates special problems for the shelter as a location and as a building.