DEATH AS A FESTIVAL: A PROPOSAL FOR THE NEXT SOCIETY"S METROPOLIS by Lina Kwon from usa

DEATH AS A FESTIVAL: A PROPOSAL FOR THE NEXT SOCIETY"S METROPOLIS

“Everyone regards dying as a great matter: but as yet death is net a festival. Not yet have people learned to inaugurate the finest festivals. The consummating death I show unto you, which becomes a stimulus and promise to the living. His death, the consummating one triumphantly, surrounded by hoping and promising ones.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

Based on my speculations of cultural progression, the following proposal assumes a mature society in which death is considered a completion of life. For this society’s constituents, death is not something to be marginalized to the outskirt of society; it is rather something to be confronted, as they understand that only by facing death, the bare fact of it, can they face their lives in its entirety.

In this society, a monumental cemetery is located at the very heart of the metropolis, where life is at its most bustling state. The cemetery’s architecture and presence will constantly remind people in the city of their destiny, but not in a way that evokes sentiments of horror or grief. It will help people to re-think about their lives, such as where they are heading, and what type of ending they have in mind, at the end of their busy days in the metropolis. They will start to talk about death not as something terrible but as the foremost important piece of their lives. They will start to celebrate the death of someone who “died well.” They will start to learn that not every death is sad. They will start to think about how to die, how to end and how to complete their lives. And I believe the cemetery’s architecture in the metropolis can direct the society in that direction.

SKYSCRAPER CEMETERY IN MIDTOWN MANHATTAN

The skyscraper cemetery is a 450m tower diagonally bisected by an elevated highway for funeral vehicles that goes 10 blocks up and down from the building along Broadway. This two lane road is raised in such a degree that the road meets the building at approximately 30 meters above ground. Due to the road’s height, funeral vehicles approaching the skyscraper cemetery will have an exceptional presence in the city scape. On this narrow two-lane road, a line of funeral vehicles will be displayed like a procession that “celebrates” someone who just completed one’s life.

Once the vehicles arrive at the building, there will be an open space available for funerals where visitors can view the city’s lively activity from above. This space will be surrounded by thick columns that support the upper part of the skyscraper that will host the ash of the dead, and then by the busy cityscape filled with human activities. Here, the dead person will go through the ceremony that is simultaneously displayed to the living. It is his last act of the play called life. The dead is then moved up to columbaria on an elevator.

CEMETERY AND VERTICALITY OF THE SKYSCRAPER

The verticality of the skyscraper will provide both a downward view of the city and an upward view of the sky to the family visiting the columbaria. Such effect will be maximized by getting rid of the wall. The visitors will be fully exposed to the atmosphere between the city and the sky. Situated in the middle of the living and the dead, the visitors will have private moments to commemorate their beloved ones. The sporadic terraces on each floor that will be slightly raised towards the sky, dramatizing the experience that the verticality of the structure provides.

GROUND FLOOR: ACTIVITIES UNDER THE WEIGHT OF DEATH

If the skyscraper is for the dead, the ground floor is for the living. The columns supporting the weight of the dead above are rooted on this ground for the living. The living walk, run, roll and play on this crate of untamed nature - wild grass and earth - thus celebrating life under the weight of death with the purest physical activities. Here they physically and visually confront death, and feel the weight of death. They will finally realize that every single physical movement they make is an exact opposite to the concept of death. In that way, they face life by facing death