A breathing encounter with the dead.
Location
Mumbai, India
Type
Thesis, 2017
Contemplating Cemetery Spaces as an urban inclusion of engagement.
Abstract: A visit to the cemetery every now and then to pay homage to my grandfather who passed away before I was born, gave me solace. This was a probable answer to my silence and stillness in this stressful and stressed out reality of my existence. Over the course of exploring these sublime experiences around death, I realized myself as a protagonist of this thesis research. Conversations with myself resulted in me critically looking at spaces of death, namely cemeteries in present day urban realties of our cities. Thus provoking myself to examine whether these spaces hold the potential of offering more to a bereaved soul, to a mourner or simply to a being from the city. Whether they must continue to offer silence, or whether they must provoke conversation, this thesis is a search.
“One of the great beauties of architecture is that each time, it is like life starting all over again”
- Renzo Piano
The cemetery inherently by virtue of its stillness seems to bring a visitor to a pause. The stance one adheres to in such an environment is that of smallness at the hands of the immense uncertainty of all our lives. All those who have lost somebody important in their lives at some point will remember them and contemplate life and death likewise surrounding the memories shared with the deceased. This is human nature as we get attached to people and get comfortable with their inclusion in our lives; the absence of their existence forever seems to make us barren infinitely. When this happens how can a person gain sanity, or how does he/she respond to this absence as years pass by? A cemetery gives evidence of the existence of the dead and thus is a standpoint for one to hold onto memories in an urban scenario.
As cities densify, become more multicultural, and face increased environmental challenges and growing income disparity, “a new design paradigm is required for future burial grounds (Bradt, 2014). Now, at present forget contemplation, we barely have the time to attend to what is in front of us, so matters of reflection or re- engaging with
our memories etc is forgotten as the spaces that provide this remembrance are not conducive and are subject to the accessibility in the densely populated reality of the city. Cemeteries have a lurking influence of danger, threat and uncertainty due to maintenance issues etc. these make us have a certain fearful impression of death and the activities related. Thus visiting the deceased becomes a compulsion rather than a reflective and re-connective space.
Since I found my reflective nerve being provoked in the very cemetery where I engaged with my grandfather my perception towards it changed and I started reassessing how I could enhance this process of consolation for people that remain influenced by their inner self.
There is nobody in the cemetery, but in your heart. So, why do you continue visiting this place? Why do you continue thinking that death is terrible? Death is only a step to new birth. Death is a new stage of everybody’s life, an integral part of existence. It’s time to understand the endlessness of life in this silent conversation with you (in the tomb), with me and the surrounding(“The Pond of Memories | designboom.com”, 2013).
