Locating death anxieties: End-of-life care and the built environment

As quality of life improves with better and more accessible healthcare, populations worldwide continue to age. Although fewer people die at home now than ever before, hospitals remain a significant site of death, while other locations—including hospices, long-term care residences, and cancer care centres—increasingly change social conceptions of ageing, dying, and palliative care. Within these rapidly changing scenarios, and in the wake of unprecedented industrial and technological progress, the palliative building is on the verge of disappearance. At this juncture, this paper asks whether—and how—the designed location figures into the end of life. Do places have the power to mediate our experiences of and attitudes towards dying? Since we have limited authority over how and what kills us, do we then root our control of, dignity in, and reconciliation with death based on where we die? Drawing links between architectural design and end-of-life studies, this paper will consider how we register—and may address—our anxieties around death and dying within built environments of care.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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