Care Work as Architectural Research: The Construction of Early Hospice Architecture, 1957–1980

In the mid-twentieth century, Cicely Saunders, Florence Wald, and Balfour Mount helped establish the modern hospice and palliative care movement, developing an approach to end-of-life care that prioritised comprehensive care for the dying person rather than the treatment of disease alone. This paper proposes that the adaptation of Saunders’ hospice philosophy to the US and Canadian contexts by Wald and Mount was bolstered and reified by – and through – architecture. The experience of designing St. Christopher’s Hospice (Sydenham, UK), the Connecticut Hospice (Branford, USA), and the Palliative Care Service at the Royal Victoria Hospital (Montreal, Canada) helped these founders crystallise the philosophy itself. Embodied experience, relationships, and care work were central to understanding architecture and developing architectural knowledge. Using correspondence between Saunders, Wald, and Mount, this paper demonstrates the foundational role that transnational, interdisciplinary, and feminist modes of architectural production played in the creation of hospice architectures in the three countries.