Hospitality entrepreneur Oliver Peyton has teamed up with Transit Studio to create a design-focused funeral parlour in west London, which aims to make clients more comfortable with the concept of death.
Situated in the neighbourhood of Chiswick, Exit Here overhauls the experience of planning a funeral by immersing clients in a setting that shuns the typically dark and dour aesthetic of parlours.
"The funeral business has remained largely unchanged since Victorian times," Oliver Peyton told Dezeen.
"After both my parents died, I realised that the sector offered limited choice or variety and this meant people didn't have the chance to celebrate their loved ones in a way that reflected their unique lives," he continued.
"Exit Here is an attempt to shake up the sector."
Peyton ? who, up until now, has exclusively launched restaurants and bakeries ? worked alongside funeral director Barry Pritchard and London-based Transit Studio to realise the project.
"Oliver [Peyton] was very keen to offer and enable a wide variety of choice so that people can really make their exit a personal reflection of themselves," said the studio's director, Ben Masterton-Smith.
"At the same time the brief was not to create a hipster funeral parlour ? the retail environment needed to be warm and welcoming to all, but with a level of trust and dignity that you would expect from a company dealing with such an important event."

The interior of the parlour...