Ian Clarke

Died: August 25, 2015

IAN Clarke, who has died aged 52, was a gifted architect who created some of the country's finest hospices, among them the £26m rebuild project of St Columba's Hospice in Edinburgh.

With the dignity of the dying always uppermost in his mind, he designed bright, thoughtful, uplifting way stations for the terminally ill, holding passionately to the belief that they should be welcoming places which served to re-assure and comfort patients.

Though he was responsible for the design of healthcare buildings throughout the UK, some of his best work was to be found in Scotland. In addition to St Columba's he also designed the Highland Hospice in Inverness and Glasgow's Marie Curie Hospice.

Since the mid-1960s, the UK has been a pioneer in the provision of palliative care. Today there are some 250 hospices across the country and, until his death, Ian Clarke was at the vanguard of the hospice movement, devoting his entire career to their creation.

He was born the son of an architect in Stockport, Cheshire. After attending the local grammar school he went on to study at Sheffield University from where he not only graduated with a Distinction in Design but also won the 1986 RIBA President's Dissertation Award. As a result, he was offered a scholarship to study architecture in Scandinavia.

In 1990 he joined the award-winning Newcastle-based architecture firm of Jane Darbyshire & David Kendall (JDDK), early innovators in hospice design. He would stay with the practice for the rest of his life, becoming a director in 2000. By then he was specialising in healthcare design, gaining a reputation for being one of the country's leading architects of hospices.

He despaired of conventional hospital design, particularly wards for the elderly where, he argued, "distress is contagious". His mission was to ensure that patients maintained a strong sense of self identity. At the centre of his philosophy was the patient's bed which, he said, was too often regarded as a workbench for care delivery rather than the intimate place it should be.

Working closely with a variety of experts within palliative care, Mr Clarke's skill for evidence-based design became universally acknowledged with his work widely praised in one of the most influential books on the subject, Modern Hospice Design, which also featured his projects at St Gemma's Hospice in Leeds, St Oswald's Hospice on Newcastle and St Patrick's University Hospital in Cork.

Mr Clarke's work on re-building St Columba's in Edinburgh began in 2006 with initial studies to determine how the existing hospice could be reconfigured. The old hospice, regarded as ahead of its time when it opened in 1977 and centred around a Grade B Listed neoclassical house in Edinburgh's Trinity conservation area, had been extended over the years, most notably with a large in-patient wing.

However, the pace of development in palliative care services meant that the facility was no longer fit for purpose. Mr Clarke's design, using natural materials inside and out combined with integrated landscaped areas, created a therapeutic, diverse and holistic environment for care. The £26m re-built hospice, which was completed last year, was highly commended in the prestigious Building Better Healthcare Awards.

Mr Clarke met his wife, Judith Bulmer, a consultant histopathologist, in 1994 and they married the following year. They both loved gardening, art, craft and all things Japanese. In 2012, the couple finally visited Japan where the architect bemused passers-by with his meticulous photographing of doors, windows, joinery details, floor surfaces, and all the minutiae of well-made things.

Mr Clarke, who died very suddenly, is survived by Judith.

ALLAN LAING