Open remembrance

Abstract

Grief is a universal experience, yet the spaces associated with it are often separated from everyday life. This thesis approaches grief as a spatial question, investigating whether architecture can create places that allow both comfort and open forms of remembrance. It begins from the observation that grief is deeply individual, yet influenced by the environments in which loss is experienced, remembered, and shared. Since grief should not be defined or directed by architecture, the project explores how spatial design can instead create conditions that support different ways of grieving — through opportunities for reflection, conversation, retreat, and shared presence. The work combines theoretical research, case study analysis, site visits, and dialogue with a grief support group in Berlin, grounding the project in lived experiences and spatial observations. Insights from grief theory and reference projects are translated into architectural strategies related to atmosphere, spatial organization, thresholds, materiality, and orientation. The design proposal is located at the entrance of Old St. Matthäus Cemetery. It transforms and extends an existing café building into a grief support center that remains spatially connected yet programmatically distinct. Rather than merging both functions, the project maintains their independence, the café continues as an everyday social space, while the grief center provides a more protected environment for counseling, group activities, retreat, and remembrance. Materiality and construction are understood as integral to the architectural concept, shaping atmosphere, sensory perception, and the emotional experience of space. A central theme of the thesis lies in the tension between individual experience and architectural generalization. While grief is highly personal, architecture necessarily operates through shared spatial conditions rather than individual solutions. The project therefore investigates how architecture can remain open and adaptable without prescribing specific forms of grieving. In this sense, the thesis argues that architecture cannot resolve grief, but can support it by creating spatial frameworks in which comfort, remembrance, retreat, and everyday life can coexist.