“More to the design than just architecture”: Practices, philosophies, and architectures of care, 1960-1995

The architectures of long-term and palliative care have resisted related typologies, like hospitals, in the same way that the hospice philosophy resists the medical desire to cure. Fiona’s dissertation explores what care, as an evolving concept, has looked like to architects in North America and the UK since the 1960’s. It considers how architecture has contributed to the development of new types of care by examining three distinct ‘firsts’: a long-term care home built just as ideas of how to best care for aging populations were changing; the first purpose-built residential hospice in North America, and the first purpose-built paediatric hospice in the world. It considers a wide range of actors involved in the design process and identifies architectural contributions by non-traditional players: nurses, caregivers, or patients.