September 2009
61 posts
1 tag
Death and religion in a changing world - Google... →
4 tags
5 tags
Igualada Cemetery by Enric Miralles & Carme Pinos
Igualada Cemetery (also known as Cemetery Nou) was built by Carme Pinòs and Enric Miralles after an architectural competition held in 1984. Following the concept of a river of life as a “swirly stream that eroded the smooth curves of the banks of burial niches” (Peter Buchanan), they created a modern city of the dead. The cemetery is a site-specific sculpture embedded in the hilly...
5 tags
2 tags
PROJECT: ENVIRONS
The next stage in thesis development is something called ENVIRONS. It’s due next week and it assumes that the student (me!) has already finalized a site (which of course I haven’t!). It requires the student to “further understand the potential of this site” by studying the area around it. I need to “observe the number of people, their habits, and their needs and...
5 tags
Potential Sites: Narrowed Down & Updated
The Icon Project was due this past Thursday and my professors liked it a lot. I’ll upload a picture when I can, and I’ll include some of their crit comments and an explanation in that post.
But the most trouble I’ve had so far regards my site! I still don’t know where to situate my project. Since my posts about the potential sites, more have been added to the list. The...
7 tags
2 tags
Comments on my Thesis Proposal (Project Brief)
James: One of the things I was wondering if you plan to address is the fringe condition of the cities and when the density expands how that fringe is altered and if it is, how does the core at capacity react to the shift in boundary.
Rachel: I was planning on looking at that, but I think I call it the 'periphery' instead of the fringe, its a huge issue in most of the cities I look at, how the city continues to expand, and areas on the outskirts develop, creating huge problems when they go into the city to work.
James: If you're into some of the theoretical pieces of it, you should read "Des Espace Autres" by Michel Foucault. Really interesting read about this kind of edge/boundary/limen condition of recognition and reaction.
Rachel: Thanks, I'll definitely check it out. I am definitely going to look out how those boundaries between the informal / formal can be breached and integrated together.
James: Oh, then I really highly recommend the Foucault. I think you'll really dig it.
And randomly, Bjorn: (Just because it reminded me of MY thesis.) Hmm... will cemeteries still be in the fringe/peripheries in the future?
6 tags
Open Essay #5: The Architecture of Death in the...
(In regards to cremation) It has been very difficult to produce a robust, let alone grandiloquent, architectural response to the housing of very small amounts of human ash. Perhaps those who choose cremation prefer it this way: cremation is, after all, an anti-monumentalist impulse in a non-Heroic Age society. Yet throughout history, it has been the measure and form of the human body, from the...
Wellcome trust - Christina Dyrberg Portfolio →
A major hanging sculpture for the spectacular 30-metre-high vertical void in the NW corner of the Wellcome Trust´s international headquarters in London.
Consisting of 150 000 specially processed glass spheres, suspended on almost one million metres of fine stainless steel wire, the sculpture glows with a constantly shifting rainbow of colours. This effect was created through a unique process...
6 tags
6 tags
6 tags
6 tags
Open Essay #4: The Cemetery as Gallery
In the twentieth century, many figurative and scuptural arts increasingly moved out of the gallery and into the landscape, sometimes becoming the landscape itself. The aestheticization of the public landscape at times threatens to overwhelm or displace the funerary and ritualistic settings for memory and reconciliation. In the nineteenth century, the cemetery was the most conscious public...
4 tags
BRAIN-FART / BEWILDERED
So today was the first day I was finally able to get feedback from my professors about what I have. I was only able to talk to one of my professors, Martin because Bruce had to go off somewhere in the second half of class. Martin and I talked for some time. By ‘some time’ I mean, a hell of a long time. Mostly regarding potential sites… and the weak points of my thesis concept (I...
5 tags
5 tags
5 tags
4 tags
6 tags
6 tags
2 tags
PROJECT: THE ICON
So school officially started last week! One of the first projects we have to do for thesis, other than finalizing site selection (I still have to talk to my profs about that) is the Icon.
The following is mostly from the handout, but not verbatim:
What it basically is is a 3-D image representing my conceptual idea. It will embody my thesis concept in a visual and material way, but will remain...
5 tags
City Cemetery by MAE →
This proposal, for a high density inner city cemetery, aims to address the concern that many British cities are running out of burial space. The idea is to reintroduce the cemetery as a civic space in a local neighbourhood context. The scheme will offer local amenity space as well as spaces for remembrance and contemplation. Parks, gardens or marginal interstitial urban sites, instead of being...
“Each cremation takes about 20 litres of fuel oil and half a kilogram of...”
– Cremation: forse non tutti sanno che … (via abr)
8 tags
Open Essay #3: The Rural Churchyard
Historically, it is the rural churchyard rather than the urban cemetery that has dominated the popular imagination and iconography of death, particularly in Britain.
Well into the eighteenth century, according to French historian Philippe Aries, it was still quite common to inter certain ranks of people inside the church - in crypt, vault, or table tomb - though increasing numbers of people,...
4 tags
TERRASSA CITY MORGUE, Baas Arquitectes →
TECHNICAL INFORMATION
Project: 2001 Completed: 2002 Surface area: 3.000 m2 Budget: 240.404.040 € General Contractor: Construcciones Peñarroya Client: Funerària Egarense & Ayto. de Terrassa.
DESCRIPTION
… The building is conceived as a white box placed somewhere between heaven and earth, as an optimistic image of death, seen as a journey and not as the end.
...
6 tags
National September 11 Memorial & Museum | World... →
5 tags
New images released for 9/11 museum →
As New York and the rest of the world reflect over events on this day 8 years ago, fresh images have been released showing the designs for the National September 11 Memorial Museum. Steven Davis, Partner at Davis Brody Bond Aedas attended a ceremony yesterday at the 9/11 Memorial Preview Site to brief media on the updated designs.
The 9/11 Memorial Preview Site, at 20 Vesey Street in Manhattan...
6 tags
Estrela Cementery by Pedro Pacheco + Marie Clément... →
Architects: Pedro Pacheco + Marie Clément Location: Estrela, Moura, Portugal Programme: Cemetery Constructed Area: 820 sqm Budget: US $ 570,000.00 Anthropology: Clara Saraiva Engineering: G.O.P. - Gabinete de Organização e Projectos, Lda. Lighting engeneering: Raul Serafim Lndscape Architecture: Sebastião Pereira Client: E.D.I.A. - Empresa de Desenvolvimento e Infra-estruturas do...
5 tags
Open Essay #2: The Destruction of Memory
An example of some of the vandalism discovered Saturday morning at Mount Hope Cemetery in Morgan Hill, California.
The problems of the cemetery extend beyond just issues of neglect. Even newer cemeteries fail to convince most visitors of the moral or redemptive power once associated with them. One London survey found that people still preferred the idea of burial in a Victorian cemetery than in...
7 tags
LUZ CEMETERY by Pedro Pacheco + Marie Clément
As far as I can tell from the explanation on ArchDaily, there was an existing cemetery and these architects were hired to design an addition and give everything a facelift.
On the paths, white marble waste pieces were lain and “gives body to the cemetery. Between this mineral carpet and the long white walls, emerges an earth interval where the cypresses are planted.”
I think the...
6 tags
5 tags
6 tags
Auditorium and Congress Center by Menis... →
Fernando Menis, of Spanish practice Menis Arquitectos, has been announced the winner of the design of an auditorium and congress center for Morro Jable. Taking inspiration from the rocky hillside site above the beaches, Menis describes the design as “a piece which recalls a broken rock, coming away from earth.”
More images and further project description after the break.
The building,...
12 tags
7 tags
Open Essay #1: The City & The Cemetery
An urban cemetery is a reminder not just of another world, but of an entropic timeless world that is beyond human control. The cemetery evokes a sleeping world, a horizontal world, a world of permanent darkness and rest. While many may find ancient groves and burial mounds somehow comforting and even uplifting, the dense vegetated city cemetery can be intimidating.
Caspar David Friedrich....
