Hospice Vangen - terminal care centre

The basic architectural concept was to create a welcoming, protective building that facilitates family life, conversation, peace and contemplation for people in the final phase of their lives. As a building it must also provide maximum support for the necessary medical expertise and care. The overall impression must be subdued, accommodating and intimate.

Under a single, large, cohesive saddle roof, the new hospice will be shaped as a figure of eight - a butterfly - with soft angles around two inner courtyard areas. The large eaves of the roof will serve both as a cover for outdoor patios and seating and as a zone for conversation rooms, which will be positioned like boxes, semi-displaced out in the inner courtyard spaces. The horizontal lines of the eaves highlight the character of the building as a one-storey construction on a human scale, while the large roof indicates homeliness and tranquillity.

The façades of the building are made up of white, polished surfaces and timber-clad sections - interrupted by full-height glass sections, windows and doors. Trellises with plants, protective hedges and wooden seating plinths break up the façades in selected positions - particularly near the patios of the bedrooms.

The materials chosen for indoors are simple and consistent: for example, natural-coloured timber cladding on selected walls and ceilings in niches, creating cohesion with the exterior, timber-clad walls. Throughout the building, glazed sections provide transparency and separate outdoors from in – some covered either partly or entirely by screen prints.

In addition to 15 bedrooms, the building accommodates the palliative team of Aalborg University Hospital and the voluntary organisation.