death space

History Theory Criticism | Term Paper | 2015

Death space - What might a good death experience mean today?

Term Paper for History Theory & Criticism

Shubham Thakral

Sushant School of Art and Architecture

ABSTRACT

The revelation that’s been most shocking to me is how pragmatic people can be around death what they do with the body, funeral expenses, and so on. It turns out that people do choose cremation because it’s easier and cheaper than burying the dead.

I also learned how deeply embedded death is in our culture, yet how individuals don’t really have an outlet through which they can air their experiences.

Whenever I start talking to people about this work, they’ll say something like, “That’s really strange.” Then there’ll be a pause of about 30 seconds and then they talk to me for hours, telling me all of their strange family histories and secrets, really intimate, moving stories about their uncle who was in a hospice, or what the last few days of their grandmother’s life were like.

When death has been studied before, it’s usually been from a memorial standpoint — about monuments and tombstones and so on — straightforward architecture. Death is something that we don’t talk about much publicly, or even think about on a day-to-day level, it’s pervasive in our lives. Hospitals, hospices, crematoria and cemeteries surround us, yet we are not aware.

Death’s just become much institutionalized. It’s not only about the places where we die, but the experience of death, as well. On a pragmatic level, very few people want to die in the hospital. The data varies depending on the survey, but it’s usually in single digits. Yet 55% of people do end up dying in hospital.

On top of that, in the NHS in the UK, about 50% of the complaints on the NHS have to do with the care of a dying person. This says that not only do we not get what we hope for in terms of our death experience, but we are unhappy with what care does exist

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PAPER

The way we die is changing, and the way we

build for dying ... well, maybe that should too.

Do we choose dying in peace or dying in chaos? This world would be a

much better place to live in if we approach death in a way where we are

paying more heed to the space in which we die.

There’s a better way of dying and architecture can help. It's a surprisingly

fascinating look at a hidden aspect of our cities, and our lives. What might

a good death experience mean today? And how can we design differently

for the dying, as well as those caring for them? When death has been

studied before, it’s usually been from a memorial standpoint about

monuments and tombstones and so on straightforward architecture.

Death is something that we don’t talk about much publicly, or even think

about on a day-to-day level. It’s pervasive in our lives. Hospitals, hospices,

crematoria and cemeteries surround us, yet we are not aware. The

architectural history of the 20th century is often presented in terms of

advances in science and technology leading to light, airy, green, healthy

cities for the masses. It was a reaction to the filthy industrial slums of the

previous century. The narrative is about life and increased health and

progress but death is never mentioned in this story, even though these

developments have also massively changed the way we approach it. It’s

not only about the places where we die, but the experience of death, as

well. ‘’On a pragmatic level, very few people want to die in hospital the

data varies depending on the survey, but it’s usually in single digits. Yet

55% of people do end up dying in hospital.’’

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How it all started?

A hundred years ago, we tended to die of infectious diseases like

pneumonia. If they took hold would take us quite quickly. We tended to

die at home, in our own beds, looked after by Family.

Although that was the default option because a lot of people lacked

access to the medical care. And then in the 20th century a lot of things

changed. We developed new medicines like penicillin so we could treat

those infectious diseases, new medical technologies like x ray machines

were invented and because they were so big and expensive, we needed

large centralized buildings to keep them in and they became our modern

hospitals.

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After the Second World War, a lot of countries set up universal healthcare

systems, so that everyone who needed treatment could get in. The result

was that life span extended from about 45 at the start of the century to

almost double that today. 20th century was the time of huge optimism of

what science could offer. But with all of the focus on life, death was

forgotten, even as our approach to death changed dramatically. For the

past the world has seen these changes and what they mean for

architecture related to death and dying. We now tend to die of cancer and

heart disease and what that means is that many of us will have a long

period of chronic illness at the end of our lives. During that period, we are

likely to spend a lot of time in hospitals and hospices and care homes. We

all have been in a modern hospital.

The fluorescent lights and those endless corridors and those rows of

uncomfortable chairs. Hospital architecture has earned its bad reputation.

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But the surprising thing is it wasn’t like this always. These buildings are

also widely regarded as being pretty awful places to be, not just because

you tend to be there for a negative reason, but also because the buildings

themselves tend to be horrible — lots of long corridors, no natural

daylight, it’s difficult to find your way around. They’ve been designed

around the bureaucratic needs of very large institutions and the

technology that needs to be housed there.

This is degli innocente built in 1419 by Brunelleschi, who was one of the

most famous and influential architects of his time.

When I look at this and think of hospitals today, what amazes me is this

building’s ambition. It’s just a really great building.

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It has these courtyards in the middle so that all of the rooms of daylight

and fresh air. The rooms are big and they have high ceilings so they just

feel more comfortable to be in and it’s also beautiful. Somehow we have

forgotten that it’s possible for a hospital. Now if we want better buildings

for dying, we have to talk about it. But because we find the subject of

death uncomfortable, we don’t talk about it or we don’t question how we

as a society approach death. One of the things that surprised me the most

is how changeable attitudes actually are.

This is the first crematorium in the UK which was built working in the

1870s. When this was first built, there were protests in the local village.

Cremation wasn’t socially acceptable and 99.8 per cent of people got

buried. And yet only a hundred years later, three quarters of us get

cremated. People are actually really open to changing things if they are

given a chance to talk about them. So this conversation about death and

architecture is what we all should start by conducting some exhibitions or

through any other means.

Living examples to make death a less awkward

thing to talk about and to provoke conversation

Exhibition

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One of such example is of an exhibition in Venice called

‘death in Venice’.

The strangest thing was how the visitors reacted to the exhibition,

especially the audio visual works. People were dancing jumping and

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running as they tried to activate the exhibit in different ways, and at a

certain point they would kind of stop and remember they were in an

exhibition about death and maybe you are not supposed to act like that.

So there isn’t just one way that you are supposed to act around death.

What good death is or would be and what architecture that supports good

death might be like, has to be considered. This should be done to look

beyond what there has been for so many years now.

The centrepiece of exhibition was a big interactive map of London

showing all of the space that is given over to death in the city essentially

showing how death has shaped the city. It is shown how the cultural

approach to death had changed over the last century, as well as where it

is now. The idea was to provoke conversation .It was designed to be quite

playful so that people would literally engage with it. this is one of the

exhibits which shows the interactive map of London that shows just how

much of the real estate is given over to death and dying and as you wave

your hand across the map ,the name of that piece of real estate, the

building or cemetery is revealed.

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Why the map of UK?

The UK’s interesting in a variety of ways. It was the first country to

industrialize, which created a lot of changes in society. It’s a very secular

country, and one of the first to adopt cremation. It has one of the highest

rates of cremation in the world now. It’s also the country where the

modern hospice movement emerged. Palliative medicine was established

by Cicely Saunders, in 1967, in South London. Before then, hospices did

exist, but it was very nursing-based. They did care for people’s emotional

and spiritual needs, but what was missing was the medical aspect. The

project seemed to provide an opening for people to pull out their very

particular and intimate stories about their encounters with death.

Interactive installations in the exhibition in Venice

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Another of the exhibits was a series of postcards that people can take away with them. They showed people’s homes and hospitals. And cemeteries and mortuaries and they tell the story of the different spaces of death that we pass through on either side of death.

Medicine is about curing people, which sets up a conflict. It brings up a

tricky ethical issue about when, if ever, doctors should stop trying to cure

individuals. And how may we allow people to die with dignity, without

pain? I began to understand death as this really special time. You only get

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to do it once, and it can be a very close time for the family, very intimate.

It is possible to have quite positive experiences around death, although of

course losing someone you love is sad. The hospital setting isn’t

conducive to those sorts of experiences, because there’s a tension

between curative and palliative medicine. There’s also an argument to be

made that smaller institutions are better able to treat patients in a more

holistic way, taking into consideration social and spiritual needs, as well as

physical. Holistic needs are perhaps more difficult to meet in a very large

institution.

Where we die is a key part of how we die.

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Bibliography

1. Jonathan Westphal (1998). Philosophical Propositions: An Introduction to Philosophy. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-17053-2.

2. Jump up^ Robert Nozick (1981). Philosophical Explanations. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-66479-5.

3. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Julian Baggini (September 2004). What's It All About? Philosophy and the Meaning of Life. USA: Granta Books. ISBN 1-86207-661-8.

4. Jump up^ Ronald F. Thiemann; William Carl Placher (1998). Why Are We Here?: Everyday Questions and the Christian Life. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 1-56338-236-9.

5. Jump up^ Dennis Marcellino (1996). Why Are We Here?: The Scientific Answer to this Age-old Question (that you don't need to be a scientist to understand). Lighthouse Pub. ISBN 0-945272-10-3.

6. ^ Jump up to:a b c Hsuan Hua (2003). Words of Wisdom: Beginning Buddhism. Dharma Realm Buddhist Association.ISBN 0-88139-302-9.

7. ^ Jump up to:a b Paul Davies (March 2000). The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-86309-X. Retrieved 2007-07-26

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