Dying: Non Architecture Competitions

Ship of Theseus․

In collaboration with AFAB Architecture

When Jon had barely turned 13, he was told that his father had ‘passed’. “Wait a week,” his mother reassured him, “He will pass back.” Jon had learned in school that humans are data cattle; our every move is tracked by an algorithm that has learned our behavior patterns. “What is an all-go-reeth-em?” Jon had asked his mother when he was young. “It’s you. It learns from you. It continues as you even after you pass,” she explained. Her response was simple and heartening, but it created more questions for the curious child. Every night before sleeping, he wondered, “But is it still me?”

No one cried when Jon’s father passed. When the hard disk arrived a week later, his mom looked rather relieved. 100 terabytes of his father’s essence – a virtual tomb or a resurrection? Jon recalled a recent newspaper advertisement, “You can be one in a million (literally!) A beautiful server farm you can retire to. Your personality will always be part of a productive society, economy AND even politics!”

A forbidden thought snuck into Jon’s mind. He suppressed it and smiled at his dad-disk, while his mother beamed. “Where do we really go after death?”

#identity #ciberpunk #dataworkers #theeternalquestion #moderntomb

Presentation․
Functional․
Technical․

Finalist․

Non Architecture Competitions : Dying

The aim of the “Dying” competition was to develop design proposals for the cemetery typology, intended as a space – either material or immaterial – where we bury, honor or remember the dead.
The participants were asked to create innovative and unconventional projects on this theme, questioning the very basis of the notion of the cemetery.
History has shown us different approaches related to the dying experience.
Burial grounds, graveyards, cemeteries, memorial parks, and death scapes; while all of these words describe the same type of space within a community, each word conjures a different vision.
Historically cemeteries were at the periphery of the city, but over time they were integrated into the urban fabric. Cemeteries can often be found near churches, or in big parks in cities, usually gated off because the ground has been consecrated, or blessed.
In times of accelerating urbanization and densification, cemeteries face the challenge of keeping up their relevance as a public urban space. This condition is not only an issue of space but also of cultural identity that can be projected within its environment. The way the deceased are buried is reflective of the social, cultural, political, and religious views of the living.
Many cemeteries have areas based on different styles, reflecting the diversity of cultural practices around death and how it changes over time. We can say that contemporary cemeteries adapt and mutate, taking on and developing a variety of new educational, environmental and historical functions. They contain multiple meanings and they are both utterly mundane and extraordinary.
As we search for new ways to deal with the increasing amounts of the dead, new technology, and restraints on space, there are new possibilities for burial grounds that are being introduced.
Within this context, with critical thinking and creative attitude, the participants were urged to investigate how the dying experience can be reformed in the future, and respectively, how the concept of the cemetery as a space with material and immaterial characteristics can be reinvented.
Designers were asked to create an artifact, merging considerable programmatic innovation and valuable design tools. The proposal could be a device, a piece of furniture, an interior design project, a pavilion, a building, or an urban plan. Scale of intervention, program dimensions, and location were not given, and they were arranged by the participants to better suit their project.