A New Youth Rehabilitation Centre Redefines Healing Through Design

In Sainte-Thérèse, Quebec, the new Centre de réadaptation pour jeunes en difficulté d’adaptation (CRJDA) by ACDF Architecture and Stantec proposes a new architectural language for youth care—one built on dignity, empathy, and trust.

View of the passage connecting the living units to the institutional wing housing the educational spaces, health professionals’ offices, temporary detention center, and gymnasium.
Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Rejecting the rigidity and surveillance often associated with institutional environments, the building embraces gentle curves, natural materials, and soft tones to create a warm, human atmosphere. Its fluid form and calm horizontality convey openness rather than control, setting a tone closer to home than hospital.

Circulation area providing access to the living units.
Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Classroom integrating an alternative teaching space that fosters calm and relaxation.
Photo credit: Adrien Williams

The facility is organized into four wings: an educational and support wing containing classrooms, a gymnasium, library, and staff areas, and three residential wings offering safe, nurturing living spaces. Each classroom is marked by a distinct color, aiding orientation and autonomy, while flexible seating areas allow for diverse learning styles and emotional needs.

Relaxation and play area onto which the bedrooms open.
Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Between the educational and residential areas, a light-filled passage serves as both physical and symbolic threshold—bridging structured activity and personal retreat. Views of gardens and terraces reinforce a sense of continuity and calm, turning circulation into a reflective experience.

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Inside the residential wings, architecture becomes a direct agent of care. Wooden walls, soft lighting, and shared common spaces encourage comfort and connection without hierarchy. Staff offices, centrally located yet discreet, provide presence without intrusion, reflecting a model of safety grounded in empathy rather than authority.

View of the passage leading to the school and library.
Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Waiting and access area for the health professionals’ offices.
Photo credit: Adrien Williams

The design integrates strict safety standards with a quiet humanism. Built-in furniture, smooth sightlines, and subtle escape routes ensure protection while preserving dignity. Security is designed into the spatial logic, avoiding the stigma of control.

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Beyond its walls, the site extends into a landscape conceived for rehabilitation and renewal. Outdoor areas balance energy and introspection: sports fields promote group activity, while forest paths and wetland views invite silence and reflection. A dense vegetative belt conceals boundaries, ensuring privacy and serenity without evoking confinement.

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

Photo credit: Adrien Williams

The CRJDA is not a place of detention but of transition—a space to rebuild identity and trust during a fragile phase of life. It supports both residents and staff with environments that foster balance, self-esteem, and mutual respect.

Through its gentle material palette, thoughtful organization, and deep sensitivity to human emotion, the project embodies a new paradigm for social architecture—an architecture of care that protects without isolating, and heals not through therapy alone, but through the quiet power of space itself.

ACDF Architecture

With a portfolio of ambitious and design-savvy commercial, residential, hospitality, interior, and master planning projects, ACDF is recognized as one of Canada’s most forward-thinking architecture firms. Under the direction of Maxime-Alexis Frappier, Joan Renaud, and Etienne Laplante Courchesne, the firm’s harmonious designs of large-scale projects have received numerous awards and accolades in recognition of their progressive approach to a new generation of meaningful and impactful buildings.