In 2013, we won a commission through Futurecity to work with architects Rogers Stirk Harbour and NHS staff and patients at Guys’ and St Thomas’ NHS Trust as part of their journey on designing and building their new cancer centre. Our response focussed on a deep engagement with participants on the value of space, time, and a connection to body, mind and spirit, in order to inform the design of new non-clinical spaces that could support staff, patents and relatives in their daily ritual of fighting aggressive disease. The journey was transformative, enabling participants to express and embed powerful sentiment into the new building design. Our artful tools were food, conversation, ritual, drawing, writing, all coming together as collective designing of what became The Living Room within the new hospital.
