A hospice is a place where terminally ill patients are cared for. It is sometimes known as a centre for providing palliative care.

Instead of visualizing a building and working the requirements around a visualized form, this report is aiming to first define the objectives that are needed so that the form would naturally emerge from the understanding of the environment-behaviour issues of the project

At SFA, we have always believed in such an approach for all our designs. And in case of a hospice, it is more so.

It seems doable (i.e. "the right thing to do") that we work with drawings. However, a hospice is where most of the users are acutely aware of the end of their term in this world. Even the slightest insensitivity posed by the environment around them may prove disastrous. It is imperative that as architects we first remove all misconceptions -- and that includes visual images

We advocate the E-B (Environment Behaviour) approach to determine space needs of a project. In this approach, a systematic attempt is made to determine the behavioural demands posed by a user to the environment around him. In order to do that, the definition of the word "user" goes beyond what is normally used.

For an Environment Behaviouralist; a "user" is a role that is defined by society. It may manifest in an individual or a group of individuals. It is likely that one individual would be having multiple user definitions at given point in time. These definitions can be (and is often) quite fluid: It may show diurnal variations and variations with age and seasons.

Each of such user has special expectations from the environment around them in order to satisfy the demands of the role he is playing at that moment. As often he would be playing multiple roles and/or other users may be in the same physical space; it is but natural that designed environment needs to have plural features; i.e. features that take up multiple capabilities.

Such requirements are either catered to by the built portion of the environment and some of them are handled by the space (i.e. non-built) parts. All these requirements stem from three main E-B issues that concerns each of such "users"

These areas of concern are:
a) Territoriality: This is defined as the need of a user to have devices to indicate to others the presence of a territory that the user can safely call to be his own
b) Privacy: This is defined as the need of a user to have devices to define the manner in which his territory can be used by other users. Privacy need not be visual. Aural privacy is also often important
c) Wayfinding: This is defined as the need of a user to have devices to find his way around complex environments easily to locate territories suitable to his behaviour

Please note once again that the word "user" in the above definitions stems from the E-B need of defining user groups. It need not reflect just an individual. (As per E-B, an individual is just ONE of user that is manifest in an individual)

The most crucial step while designing using E-B is to identify all the users that would use the designed environment. And from that, the above areas of concern are carefully examined against each definition of the users; and from there some idea of the space requirements would emerge

In a hospice, as many of the users are not in a position to directly control the use of the built environment, there would be further issues dealing with the physical response of the design with respect to the climate which would be much more critical than otherwise. As an architect, we need to first understand all such requirements holistically before starting work on a proposal

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