The other place

Abstract

This thesis explores the meeting between the living and the dead through architectural experiences. Through the designing of a cemetery in the center of Gothenburg the thesis searches for spaces that invite the living to reflect and meet the dead and the memory of their stories. This while still being a home for the dead in the land of the living. Thus the thesis poses the questions, how to design an architecture for the experience of the meeting between the living and the dead? And how can the space for the dead be a part of the living of Gothenburg?. The thesis begins with establishing an understanding of the human relationship to our mortality and the memorial of it. The thesis is based on the theories of architectural phenomenology as a pathway to explore and understand the designing of architectural experiences connected to the experience of being human. In these theories observing and experiencing reality become important when designing a space. Poetry is often used as examples to have captured these experiences and can help imagine the experience of new spaces. Through the poems one can experience a captured moment in the mind, sparking an imagination. Therefore as a method the thesis asks poems about the sensation and atmosphere of the spaces at the cemetery. Mainly through haiku since they are a very direct and descriptive way of portraying observations of the world. The method is developed together with a found fascination of Poem in seven spaces by Alberto Giacometti. The poems or parts of them are placed on site, creating different spaces with sensations that the architecture is to express. The method allowed for an experience of the space before there was a visualised design. The design process became more grounded and decisions had deeper meaning. Ultimately the meeting with the dead requires a simple and silent architecture that says things to the people experiencing it.