This research explores the implications of a growing shift of healthcare from what has previously resided within the domain of the hospital to the private space of the home. The excepted notions of these spaces bring together very different practices and environments and the inexorable geographical shift in care (to the home) has potential impact on our physical and emotional relationship with the symbolic meaning of home.

The outcome of this research, a collection of 20 artefacts (furniture) not only postulates what the new objects may be that facilitate and support this shift in care but how representation and adaption of familiar objects may have a duality in the home that reflects the hybridity of its evolving form and developing function.

As with much of Chamberlain’s research over the last three decades the exhibition or artefact or design is not just a means of dissemination but also provides an opportunity to test thinking and elicit further insights into the field of enquiry.

The insights that informed these artefacts were developed through a series of workshops and conference presentations conducted at Sheffield Design Week 2015, the INCLUDE Conference RCA, London 2015, Design & Emotion Conference Amsterdam 2016 and the Research through Design Conference, Edinburgh 2017. The assimilated knowledge gathered from these workshops contributed to the development of HOSPITAbLe collection that was first exhibited at the WAAG society, Amsterdam 2017, UMPRUM gallery Prague 2017, Further dissemination of this research includes; Health Services Research Network Conference 2018, ‘An Aesthetic – new domestic landscapes to support future care’. Presentation at the Architecture, Media, Politics, Society conference (AMPS), University of the West of England 2018. What is Design for health/ Provocations and Questions? Keynote speaker, Health Collab Symposium. Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, 2018.