ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the growing concern with the conditions in which many older people die at home or in hospital. It cites a number of medical and architectural critics on the culture and design of traditional hospital buildings and settings, particularly where death is diagnosed, announced and attended. There then follows a brief summary of the early days of the ‘modern hospice movement’, followed by an outline of the architectural and design issues involved in thinking afresh about the hospice as a new building type. As ‘the right to a good death’ becomes a new social demand, and the UK hospice movement inspires similar developments across the world, opportunities for maximising the effects of thoughtful and sensitive design are discussed and evaluated.
