Se-un Sang-ga Myu-ji : Bereavement as Monomyth by Tommy Down from uk

The Se-un Arcade Memorial Park continues the tradition of vertical cemeteries as proposed by Thomas Wilson’s Metropolitan Sepulchre and the Memorial Necropole Ecumenica in Sao Paulo in Brazil with the imagined occupation of the third section of Se-un Arcade in central Seoul in Korea.

The Park shares a geomantic axis with Changdoekgung Palace between Bukaksan and Namsan, the northern and southern mountains and sits behind the Cheongyeongchong Stream, a much beloved pedestrian route through the centre of Seoul.

The scheme incorporates aspects of the traditional Korean bereavement: gathering at home at the inner garden, procession to places of relevance to the deceased before returning home, then through the threshold gates into the outer garden before journeying into the mountain for burial and finally provision of a small table before the grave by which the relationship between the living and the dead is mediated. A bereavement for a family that has a trajectory from the present, back to the past and forwards into the future.

However here is bereavement in a contemporary urban manner. The periphery of the vertical city is upwards and so the memorial spaces occupy the heights of the arcade. The liminal spaces that separate it from the living are formed by market stalls and boutique retail. This juxtaposition of memorial with a retail programme enables the process of reconnecting the inner world of the bereaved to the outer world of the day to day and the successful reconfiguration of their autobiography to include the continuation of the deceased.

Promession allows for a temporary memorial, a mugunghwa shrub to be nourished and tended. A temporal memorial is provided by a glass block, etched with the name, face and age of the deceased. Embedded within this is a data card storing a visual biography that is then accessible to all. The temporal memorial stays beside the mugunhwa for a short time before being hung above alongside others in the halls of the cemetery.

A view between city and the mountains is framed by the stories of those past – and so reminding all that these stories continue within us.

Joseph Campbell’s ‘Hero with a Thousand Faces’ describes the shared characteristics of the myths we have made to come to terms with the story of our lives and the world in which it is set. In this he proposes that there is in fact one underlying story, relevant to all of us, which he calls the Monomyth. The characters remain the same, only the location and our attitude to it ever changes.

The Monomyth details the journey of denial, acknowledgment, and acceptance of our passage through the world’s achingly subtle, fleeting beauty and its inexplicable cruelty and suffering. It is no surprise that the traditional places of bereavement and the rituals bound to them mirror the structure of Campbell’s Monomyth because bereavement is our essential journey. To recognise this we need a new comprehension of the typology of a site for mourning, of committal.

We need places that allow us to refuse the call, that accommodate discovery on the road of trials, allow realisation in the belly of the whale and for us to return as masters of the two worlds.

Let us not cobble together some cold industrial process to faded images of our cultural heritage, but use technology to create a memorial that truly responds to the needs of our journey. This memorial must respect our character and our location, in which our attitude is rooted, and in deference to this, bring the memorial back to where we live. This is where our journey begins and it is here that we must be allowed to remember that it will continue.

This project is guided to a Korean attitude in central Seoul, but hopefully the relevancy of its character is recognisable to all.