Interior Architecture Commons^™

Hospitable Healthcare Design: Bridging Hospitality And Palliative And End-Of-Life Care, Gabrielle Fernandez

Hospitality Design Graduate Student Capstones

Aside from the reverence of cemeteries and funeral homes, healthcare facilities are spaces where the reality of death coexists with the vitality of life. Regardless of culture or background, every person has to interact with the certainty of mortality, but not all of society is provided with rituals and spaces that adequately allow one to grieve. In the case of patients and family members who experience palliative and hospice care, the grieving process tends to begin long before the person has passed; changes in physical and mental state are a foreshadowing to an end that is hard to accept overnight. …