In the forest, life and death are trapped in an endless cycle where living turns to dead, which feeds the living. In British cities, most people die in hospital – in undignified closed-off sterilised containers. The project proposes a hospice in Waterlow Park by Highgate Cemetery, seeing the tree as a site of living and dying. The project encourages death discourse through designing a sensitive hospice that aims to make death’s discussion and acceptance easier. Patients are put to rest in a forest park, their bodies turned into trees which shade the living, while dead-matter mycelium provides comfort for the patients.

However, the hospice mainly focuses on life, not seeing dying as a monolith but a gradient of different abled bodies, from most to least able. Spaces gradient from inside-inside to outside-outside, allowing patients to find their ideal comfort in space. This availability of choice is magnified by mycelium fabric layering. Different paths encourage patients to get lost in the forest at a level that is comfortable to them. Trees are used as devices of time which project shadows throughout spaces, appealing and soothing to the dying’s heightened senses. Altogether, the hospice focuses on patient comfort while suggesting that dying might not be so scary.