Contemporary society has grown seemingly detached from the realities of growing old and subsequently, dying. A consequence, perhaps, of death becoming increasingly overmedicalised, nearly one in two UK nationals die institutional deaths. In this article we, two architectural scholars engaged in teaching, research and practice and a nurse and healthcare scholar with a focus on end-of-life care and peoples’ experiences, wish to draw attention to a controversy resulting from a paucity in current literature on the terms of reference of the dying ‘patient’ as we navigate the future implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. This contributes to a relative lack of touchstones for architects to refer to when designing person-centred palliative care environments. Unlike common building types, architects are extremely unlikely to have lived experience of palliative care environments as patients; and therefore, require the help of healthcare professionals to imagine and empathise with the requirements of a person dying away from home. This paper includes a review of ageing and dying literature to understand, and distil from an architectural perspective, who, design professionals, are designing for and to remember the nuanced characteristics of those we hold a duty of care toward. We ask readers to heed the importance of accurate terms of reference, especially when commissioning and/or designing environments of palliative care. Furthermore, we put forward an appeal for interdisciplinary collaboration to develop a framework for codesigning positive experiences of person-centred care and environments at the end of life.

Neither a ‘hospital’ nor a ‘home’; the in-patient hospice has a unique architectural identity remaining largely undocumented. There is a plethora of architectural research regarding more common-place healthcare buildings such as hospitals and care-homes. (RIBA n.d) However the architecture of in-patient hospices is misunderstood in the role it can play in supporting the holistic principles of palliative care as backdrops for ‘not just a good death but a good life to the very end’ (Gawande 2014, pg. 245).Reconciling the social and spatial this research aims to establish an authentic identity for in-patient hospices; developing opportunities and situations for environments that become ‘sympathetic extensions of our sense of ourselves’ (Bloomer KC + Moore CW 1977, pg. 78) enabling those at the end of their life to dwell with dignity.An ethnographic study involving practise led design research; the research engages with experiences of the researcher and users of Welsh in-patient hospices alongside interrogations of existing architectural strategies. This inter-disciplinary methodology will provide a ‘back and forth’ movement to reflect with the community of practise upon design projects and fieldwork.Foundation work concluded that ‘homely’ is a too broad and subjective concept with which to define meaningful architectural responses for the variety of users and uses of in-patient hospices. Building upon this initial visits to Welsh in-patient hospices and design primers of key moments of inhabitation aims to provide conclusions on how architecture can create and balance the individual phenomenological experiences and needs of patients family and staff.References. RIBA. Health buildings and hospitals [Online] (n.d). Available at https://www.ribabookshops.com/books/health-buildings-and-hospitals/010503/ (Accessed: 31 May 2018). Gawande A. Being mortal: Medicine and what matters in the end2014;245. New York: Metropolitan Books Henry Holt and Company.. Kent BC, Charles MW. Body memory and architecture1977;78. New Haven & London: Yale University Press.