Earth Side: Between the Ground and the Returning Body

Loss is not life’s interruption but its condition. This research reimagines the hospice in Montagu, Western Cape, as a threshold rather than a terminus, mediating private, communal and inherited grief. In a South Africa where apartheid’s death geographies still shape who dies with dignity, access to care remains uneven. Moving beyond clinical models, the project foregrounds emotional, spiritual and ancestral dimensions of dying, positioning architecture as an act of care, repair and passage.