How Architecture Influences Visitors + Animal Flow

Many of our new animal shelter clients tell us the same story: Their facility is overcrowded, they struggle to reduce numbers without euthanasia and intake numbers continue to be unwieldy. Compounding the issue is the fact that an overcrowded shelter is harder to keep clean and free of disease, yet it’s more difficult to adopt out sick or stressed animals. This cycle sounds familiar because it’s one that almost every shelter faces.

But let’s take a step back and think of this process as the flow of animals through a shelter and toward adoption. From this perspective, we can identify the bottleneck and find solutions. There are many ways shelter staff can improve this process, and all of them point to minimizing the length of stay — moving animals through the shelter as quickly as possible. The physical design of a shelter can significantly support the management process by promoting the idea of flow-through.