| Summary: | In the middle of the twentieth century, the growing need to provide a new type of care to patients suffering from incurable diseases, distinct from the care given until then in hospitals, resulted in the emergence of palliative medicine. Thus, palliative medicine allows to question the meaning of care issues within the contemporary medical field. Its institutionalization in France in the 1980s led to the creation of a specific place, the Palliative Care Unit, especially revealing of the theoretical, ethical and empirical configuration of palliative medicine. Synonym of palliative care, the notion of end-of-life accompaniment characterizes a transition in the medicalization of the dying process : from negativity – fighting the “taboo of death” – to positivity. Through the study of the spatial arrangement (architecture, topography and ambience) of a Palliative Care Unit, we want to show how this particular place can illustrate this new medical configuration.
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