2nd Edition
Modern Hospice Design The Architecture of Palliative and Social Care
1. A new world of palliative and social care 2. A house at the end of life 3. Be kind quickly: how the modern hospice movement changed (nearly) everything 4.The brief is everything 5. Public faces and private places 6. Everything gathered in one room 7. Open to the world and to life 8. In a hospice garden 9. The evening land
Biography
Ken Worpole is the author of a number of admired books and studies on architecture, landscape and urban design, and an adviser on public policy to the UK government, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, and the Heritage Lottery Fund. A former Professor at The Cities Institute of London Metropolitan University, in the words of The New Statesman, ‘Worpole is a literary original, a social and architectural historian whose books combine the Orwellian ideal of common decency with understated erudition.’ Elsewhere, The Independent newspaper has written that, 'For many years Ken Worpole has been one of the shrewdest and sharpest observers of the English social landscape.'
"This book should be a standard design guide for all architects, local authority planners and others, as well as ourselves, the potential users of the services provided."
John Bold, The Journal of Historic Buildings & Places, vol 04, 2025
What reviewers have said about Ken Worpole's most recent books:
Last Landscapes: the architecture of the cemetery in the West
'One of the most thought-provoking books of the year.'
THE INDEPENDENT
'An intensely personal analysis, supported by wonderful photographs.'
THE ARCHITECTS' JOURNAL, BOOKS OF THE YEAR
'A richly humane and engrossing book which incorporates a huge range of sources: he quotes anthropologists, novelists and a wealth of thinkers. The result is a work that is warm, compassionate, intelligent and thought-provoking.'
BUILDING DESIGN
Modern Hospice Design: the architecture of palliative care
‘Ken Worpole traces a path out of the darkness and into the light: from the Victorian asylum or sanatorium, devised to punish the sick, to the hospice movement and its assertion that even those who can't be made well by clinical medicine are entitled to be treated by the medical profession with not just dignity but something like love.’
THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
‘This concise, well-referenced book encourages the reader to consider whether design can foster hope…Worpole’s book speaks directly to designers and health care professionals to take this opportunity to engage with the deeper issues of ritual and occasion.’
JOURNAL OF DESIGN HISTORY
