Architectures of Death

Jamie Henry

Architectures of Death A study of the cultural role of burial architecture through close study of Igualada and BrionVega cemeteries

A dissertation submitted towards MA (hons) Architectural Design University of Edinburgh 2011/12

University of Edinburgh - Architectural Design Dissertation 11/12 Jamie Henry, S0826112

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Architectures of Death

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Contents

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62

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Preface

Chapter 1: Death- --

Chapter 2: Place------

Chapter 3: Brion Cemetery, Treviso---

Chapter 4: Igualada Cemetery, Catalonia- --

Reflections

Bibliography

Illustration Sources


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To be a human being means to be on the earth as mortal. It means to dwell.1

For being so concise, the above two sentences from Building Dwelling Thinking by Martin Heidegger provide a surprisingly potent starting point from which to consider the role of an architecture of burial. They raise a number of key questions, perhaps the most obvious of which is; what is it to be mortal? The answer seems self-evident; to be mortal is to be capable of death. However, this statement itself requires further thought. ‘Death’ is an inherently cultural phenomenon; our conceptions of what it is to die, how one should prepare for death, how to deal with the deceased and notions of a life after death vary considerably between cultures. To understand one’s mortality is to recognise it through the specific lens of one’s cultural background. What is it to be on the earth? Another question which seems to answer itself, but which also requires closer consideration. In parallel with the above points, how we perceive and understand the world and our place in it are also conditioned by the specific culture in which we find ourselves. The body and its senses position us within the phenomena of the world, and our cultural background determines how we interpret and derive meaning from those phenomena. We are given further insight into what this may mean when we consider what it is to dwell. Heidegger draws an etymological connection between the High German words Bin, Baun and Bauen: to Be, to dwell and to build. Baun, dwelling, means to inhabit a place. Therefore, to Be is to be in a place, and to build in what Heidegger would claim to be the genuine sense, is to build in a place. But what do we mean by place? How do we define the localising character which allows us to distinguish it from anywhere else?

Preface

Heidegger, Martin; (1971) Building Dwelling Thinking; in Poetry, Language, Thought;

Harper & Row; London; p. 147 1


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It is the ambition of the following discussions to consider the importance of these questions as a means to speculate on the cultural role of burial architecture. One will look to establish a picture of shifting cultural paradigms of death and place as a means to speculate upon particular understandings of these phenomena, which could bring us to a fuller awareness of them in life. From this discursive foundation, one will closely examine two exemplary examples of contemporary burial architecture; BrionVega Cemetery designed by Carlo Scarpa and Igualada Cemetery designed by Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós. In doing so, one hopes to examine the means by which they relate to notions of mortality and locality, make those notions visible and coherent to the individual, and carry and preserve those notions as cultural meaning.


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Chapel Graveyard Wiltshire

Fig1


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In order to facilitate a discussion of burial and memorial architecture, we must first consider how we understand the phenomenon of death in a contemporary context. To do so, we will examine how attitudes to death have shifted and been reconsidered over time and the formative influences which have conditioned such developments. By discussing the contemporary attitude to death in parallel with particular models by which we can understand it, one hopes to set up a discursive framework, allowing for the illumination of the latent potential of burial architecture.

Historical Attitudes to Death

Over a period of many centuries, the collective and individual understandings of death in Western civilisation have drifted and reestablished themselves in many divergent patterns. Phillipe Ariès suggests that these gradual paradigmatic shifts can, for the sake of historical understanding, be classified into four distinct attitudes conditioned by particular revisions in collective opinion.2 The first of these, he defines as ‘tamed’ death, which we may better understand as ‘familiar’ death. This attitude to death is the most enduring of those discussed, lasting for almost a ‘millennia’. Death was accepted as the common, unavoidable fate of the human race. Any fear of dying was mitigated by deep-set religious and ritual customs which were the responsibility of the individual to implement. However, it was not considered a private occurrence. The bed-chamber of the dying became a public place to be entered freely and without overt emotion or sadness: death was simply what was to be expected. Burial practices mirrored this acceptance. Ossuaries were commonplace and the process of disinterring skeletons once decomposed was seen as the most sensible way of preserving the continued use of churchyard burial grounds. The dead made no more impression on the living than the prospect of their own death.3 (See Fig. 1)

1DeathHistorical, Modern and Heideggerian

Ariès, Phillipe; (2009) Western Attitudes to Death; Marion Boyers; London2

Ariès, Phillipe; pp. 1-253


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The Image of the LivingEdinburgh

Fig2


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The second of Ariès’ understandings of death stems from approximately the Twelfth Century, and is referred to as ‘one’s own death’, which we understand as an individuated death. The shift corresponds to a theological one; the foreshortening of the eschatological time between death and the ‘Final Judgement’. The individuation of judgement meant that the deathbed scene became overlaid with an anxiety of individual trial. With the immediacy of judgement there was no longer considered to be a period of ‘slumber’ upon death. The passage to the afterlife without pause allowed for the continuation of identity into death. This became apparent in the individuation of the sepulchre, succeeding the idea of the corpse and burial monument as anonymous. Tombs increasingly called to mind the deceased’s identity in life, through inscriptions effigies and beautified portraits. These likenesses were increasingly endowed with a sense of material permanence, allowing for their representation on earth to recognise their continued identity in the afterlife.4

(See Fig. 2) The third conception; ‘thy death’dates from the early eighteenth century, and refers to the romanticisation of the death of another. From this point on, death was considered to be a transgression, a break from and an opposition to life. In poetry and literature for example, the death of another was to be feared more than one’s own demise.5 Where previously death was ever-present and banal, the separation borne of death was now the cause of what would be considered hysterical mourning in a contemporary context. Building on the permanence imparted by the sepulchre, the location of the burial monument drastically gained in significance. By going to the particular place of burial, one could evoke the memory of the deceased; memory which began to confer upon the dead an immortality which had been hinted at in the previous era but had not yet become fully manifest.6


Ariès, Phillipe; p. 67: For example in The California’s Tale by Mark Twain5


1 Death


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The final of these categories is referred to by Ariès as ‘forbidden death’ and brings us to the contemporary consideration of death.

Modern Death In the mid nineteenth century, contemporary with the emergence of ‘enlightened’ thought, we see the beginnings of a dramatic shift in the understanding of death and how to deal with the dead. Death began to be understood as something to be suppressed. Something ugly and shameful, it was an unwelcome interdiction of sadness into an otherwise happy life and was to be discussed only in discreet whispers and hushed tones: ‘not before the children’ 7 We see the shift in attitudes towards death and the body aligning with the advent of scientific empiricism. The conception of the body as an object of medical investigation replaced any conception of metaphysical meaning. Death became viewed as a technical problem, a failure of the functioning of the body; ‘a collapse of integrated bodily functioning’8. With advances in medical science, even the point at which someone could be considered dead became problematic. With the development of mechanical ventilators in the 1950s, it became possible for brain function to be negligible whilst the patient was still breathing and their heart still beating. Was this person to be considered alive or dead? A separation of cardiopulmonary and neurological functions followed, with death increasingly being recognised as a legislative question9. Our understanding of human death, and thus life, were hereafter to be conditioned by a pervasive instrumentalism. Attitudes of how to deal with the bodies of the dead underwent a parallel revision. The crowded chapel graveyards which had served as burial grounds since the sixth century were suddenly considered repugnant. Previous practices of exhuming the dead once decomposed, or the not uncommon ‘jostling’ of corpses to make space were now perceived to be macabre, gruesome and medieval: ‘we moderns can contemplate

DeGrazia, David 9

Gorer, G. (1955) The Pornography of Death (revised), in Gorer, G. (1965) Death, Grief and

Mourning in Contemporary Britain, Cresset Press; London; p. 52 7

DeGrazia, David; (2011) The Definition of Death; in Zalta, Edward N. (ed.); The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 Edition),

, URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2011/entries/death-definition/>. 8


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death ‘never polluted with the idea of the charnel house ... nor the revolting emblems of mortality’’10. Cemeteries were thus decentralised and removed from any concept of decay or corrosion. Superficially, the argument for this displacement was on the grounds of ‘public health’. However, there was no evidence to indicate that the odours arising from the saturated soil of the crowded graveyards were in any way harmful; indeed, experts in the medical fields were well aware that dead bodies were less dangerous than infected live ones. Nonetheless, once the idea that the bodies of the dead were unsanitary penetrated the public consciousness, an attitude of superstition spread amongst the middle classes, ensuring that dealing with ‘cadavers’ became a question of dealing with waste matter. This can be seen to be particularly pronounced in London where in 1852 the Commissioners of Sewers replaced the church as the legally recognised administrators of the city’s burials.11

The contemporary understanding of death and the dead still carries much of the prejudice stemming from these first roots of modernism. The family structure which supported the dying in the previous centuries has been replaced by the medical professional, with death in hospital becoming increasingly common as the most ‘comfortable’ way to die. (‘Comfort’ in the medical sense is most often a nullifying of pain, emotion and even awareness of the dying as an act of kindness). In a further step towards eradicating the dead, in England, cremation has overtaken burial as the most prevalent means to deal with the deceased. Aries argues that cremation, paired as it often is with a scattering of the ashes, is a manifestation of the deeply modern motivation to forget the body, to nullify it, to cast off death altogether.12 And yet society presents a somewhat ambivalent attitude to death. whilst natural processes of corruption and decay are considered obscene, or the display of overt emotion in relation to the death of a loved one is seen as improper; we are increasingly exposed to violent and unnatural death on a

Ariès, Phillipe; p.9112

Laqueur, Thomas W.; (2001) Spaces of the Dead; in Ideas from the National Humanities Centre, Vol. 8, No. 2 pp. i-1310

Laqueur, Thomas W.; p. 1111

1 Death


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Enlightenment cemetery Paris

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massive scale, through televised war and horror film. Particular death, that which is most often violent and is seen to be the product of victimisation or noble intentions, is exalted.13 For example, the romanticisation of the brave soldier in a World War II film, or memorials to those killed in the September 11th attacks. We are increasingly distanced from the notion of a natural, peaceful death as having meaning through the adverse message that death in extraordinary circumstances is more powerful. The above discussion illustrates a number of sociocultural factors which have led to a condition in which we wary of considerations of death. By recognising our contemporary attitudes as the most recent phase in a broader trajectory, we realise what we have lost: The dying are isolated from the communities, rituals and even the families which brought them comfort and endowed their death with meaning. The architecture which commemorates the deceased becomes equally impotent. It becomes marginalised and obsolete, stripped of its cultural significance. The following deliberations will look to reconnect with the lost meaning of death through the particular lens offered by the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. In doing so, they aim to open up a consideration of how we may recognise death as having a formative influence on how we understand the significance of human life. It is through this lens that one hopes to reconnect with the lost potency of burial and sepulchral architecture.

Gorer, p. 5113

1 Death


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Death Structuring Life

Before looking to the writing of Heidegger, we must recognise the unfamiliar connotations implicit in his terminology. The implications in term ‘death’ become delaminated, differentiating between ‘death’ and ‘demise’. He does not equate death with the empirical moment of our loss of life (which he terms our ‘demise’). It instead refers to an understanding of existence as fundamentally finite, through humans’ unique capacity to anticipate the inevitability of their own extinction. He thus understands death as a ‘limit-situation’, not in the absolute sense, but as a structuring mechanism, fundamentally conditioning our existence: ‘Finitude is not some property that is merely attached to us, but is our fundamental way of being’.14 This understanding of death throughout life becomes apparent in the nature of our projection towards the future; the plans we make and the projects we choose to pursue. We acknowledge the finite nature of our existence implicitly in each of these decisions, and thus implicitly acknowledge it in our self-awareness and self-conception.15

From these points, Heidegger argues that to anticipate death and to accept our finitude, is to understand the structure of one’s existence most fully, enabling one to live ‘authentically’. If we are to accept this position as offering understand the importance of death in our understanding of human life, what do we learn about the contemporary attitudes to death outlined above? In Heideggerian terms, the denial of death causes us to live ‘inauthentically’, not engaging with or interpreting the inescapable conditions of our existence. The mechanisms by which we engage with death are thus paramount to our understanding of it, and condition us in such a way as either accepting or denying this loss-of-self. The symbolic character and structured disposition of the ritualistic ceremonies we perform at times of death direct our attention to the object around which they are conducted, bringing a particular significance upon

Heidegger, Martin; (1995) The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics ; World,

Finitude, Solitude; Indiana University Press; Bloomington 14

Carel, Havi; (2006) Life and Death in Freud and Heidegger; Rodopi B. V.: Amsterdam 15


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them, and upon the relation to those performing the rituals: ‘Rites have the capacity to give value and meaning to the life of those who perform them’ .16

As the material presence which conditions and is conditioned by these rites, burial architecture has an important communicative role to play. Rites gain meaning through their repetition and therefore through their continuity with the past.17 It can be argued that burial architecture behaves similarly: The manner in which such an architecture facilitates or denies the performance of these commemorations and engages with concepts of death, loss and the past, significantly conditions the means by which we understand our own awareness of death.

Burial architecture registers and makes concrete attitudes to death, seeking to preserve those attitudes through its very material presence. It generates a reciprocal relationship with the themes it makes manifest and the rituals it facilitates. As we lose our notions of the importance of death, the architectures which commemorate it become impotent and devoid of meaning. Equally, as we lose contact with the architecture which seeks to preserve that meaning, we increasingly lose contact with notions of death itself, and the importance of recognising it throughout life. The question which is raised in this discussion is thus an obvious one, but one of importance. How can burial architecture, by illuminating rather than dampening the nature of death and the importance of ritual, return us to an understanding of life as finite and allow us to live ‘authentically’. One aims to illustrate this through the close examination of the two examples mentioned previously. However, we must first examine another facet of the discussion; how these themes may be positioned within the specificity of the particular cultural contexts which have constructed them.

Connerton, Paul; (1989) How Societies Remember; Cambidge University Press; Cambridge, p. 4516

Connerton, Paul; p. 4517

1 Death


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2PlaceFrom Abstraction to Location

The previous chapter sets out the possibility of an architecture that allows the individual to come to terms with the notion of death, allowing us to recognise it as a structuring mechanism in life. What those discussions fail to acknowledge, is that architectures and rituals which deal with death are deeply rooted in the specific cultural framework of a place. If we accept Augé’s understanding of place as being fundamentally about identity, relations and history,18 then burial architecture, - as an opportunity to come to terms with one’s own mortality, enact social rituals and engage with the past - can be considered to be fundamentally ingrained in place.. Through an examination of contemporary attitudes to place and specific counter-models, one hopes to uncover a further potential of contemporary burial architecture; to locate the individual within a place and thus within their culture.

Part 1: The Loss of Place

The Primacy of Space Where have all the places gone? In the long wide wake of Aristotle, the answer has become increasingly evident: submerged in space.19

To recognise the potency of place, we must first understand the pervasive logic of space which is dispersing it. Where place looks inward to localities and specificities; space looks outward to a cosmic, universal expanse. Stemming from the perspectival space of the renaissance, the understanding of the space of human occupation as a homogeneous, isotropic expanse has become increasingly accepted as the truth. In this scenario, both the body and the environment are indifferent. The individual is a detached observer in an abstract expanse.20 Even

Augé, Marc; (2008) Non-Places, An Anthropology of Supermodernity; Verso; London; p. 6318

Casey, Edward, S.; (1997) The Fate of Place : A Philosophical History; University of California Press, California; p. 19719

Motycka-Weston, Dagmar; (1996) The Non Perspectival Space of the Lived City; in Pérez-Gómez, Alberto and Parcel, Stephen (eds.); Chora 2: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture; McGill-Queens University Press; Montréal; pp. 150-15220


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the term ‘space’, and the numerous definitions it can employ allows us an indication of the vagueness with which we address the environment we inhabit, Space can equally denote distance (the space between two posts), a temporal expanse (the space of a week), an expansive volume (the airspace controlled by a territory) or digital memory (storage space, or website advertising space).21

Measurement of space, which is seen to allow us to comprehend it and thus avoid the ‘metaphysical unease’ we feel, is another factor which perpetuates its pervasion.22 Empirical systems of measure are reductive understandings of our environment to numerical data, to facilitate a system of equivalence. The architectural profession necessarily operates within this system, due to the requirements of accuracy placed upon it due to the manufacturing of components which must assemble correctly. When the architect discusses the ‘site’, it is a measured area, often denoted by a single red outline. Site in this sense, is not situated. The site is understood as a locus in a geometrical grid of neutral space; a mere phase in the expansive field.

Global Operations

We may know much more about history today than ever before, but precisely in making the past an object of scientific investigation, the sense of belonging to the past is lost.23

The submission of the world and its divergent phenomena to the scientific methods of empiricism illustrates a similar point to the one above. By attempting to rationalise complex cultural, historical or social phenomena under a single umbrella understanding, we are dissociated from them. We may see the act of mapping as a particularly eloquent example of this, one which gives a concrete example of the above discussion of space. We increasingly (through

Augé, Marc; p. 67 21

Casey, Edward, S.;The Fate of Place : A Philosophical History; pp. 197-200 22

Harries, Karsten; (1983) Thoughts on a Non-Arbitrary Architecture; in Perspecta, Vol. 20

, p. 13 23


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exponentially increased use of digitally available map software as a method of orientation) understand our environment through maps. These are accepted as inherently truthful; as a depiction of spatial fact which can be accepted without dispute. However, the process of mapping is an active, reductive process in which the cartographer exercises a power over the content to be included and omitted. It is an ‘intricate, controlled fiction’24 which imposes a system of equivalence over the environment, perpetuating our understanding of space as pervasive. Indeed by simply continuing to drag the cursor across a digital map, one can be looking upon the other side of the world in a matter of seconds. Attitudes to history may be understood in a similar sense. We accept the historical narratives in which we are educated without questioning the agendas they mask or the facets which have been lost in a construction of the past. The investigative methods of empirical thought can be understood as distancing us from our relation to our cultural past precisely through the abstracting means by which we seek to understand them. A concrete example of this phenomenon can be found in the ‘city branding’ exercises which involve re-appropriating and re-curating the history of a city for the purposes of making it appealing to the tourist as a holiday location. Such a practice involves the smoothing out and re-writing of the multifaceted and layered historic paradigms to be read as an easily understandable narrative. This attempt at defining the specificity of the city in such a way is actually a response more closely to the logic of global commercialism than it is to the city in question. Tourism developments begin to resemble their contemporaries in other cities more closely than the city they inhabit.25

The loss of genuine relation with the past feeds us into a discussion of our loss of temporality. Our temporal patterns of existence, traditionally conditioned by the passage of seasons, are being lost in an ‘immediate memory’ of real-time

Glendinning, Miles; (2010) Architecture’s Evil Empire : The Triumph and Tragedy of Global Modernism; Reaktion; London25

Harley, J.B.; (1988) Maps, Knowledge and Power; in Cosgrove, Denis, and Daniels, Stephen (eds.); The Iconography of Landscape pp.277-312; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge; p. 28524

2 Place


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‘Non-Place’ Airport

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telecommunication.26 We are distanced from both the past and the future by the ubiquitous present of the internet and its increasingly pervasive presence. Virilio posits a ‘trans-apparent horizon’ which erodes the lived temporality of our existence in the world through our inability to determine the reality of distance and of journey.27 Through this, we are seen to be increasingly losing touch with our embodiment; becoming increasingly reliant on the interface (the computer, the television), bringing us to a state of ‘sedentarization’. We thus become a ‘civilisation of forgetting’; a society with no extension, duration or depth, due to our permanent telepresence across the globe.

Non-Place

a person entering the space of non-place is relieved of his usual determinants. He becomes no more than what he does or experiences in the role of a passenger, customer or driver28

To find a concrete manifestation of the phenomena discussed above, we look to the concept of ‘non-place’. If anthropological place can be considered to be about a sense of personal identification, a relation with others and with a common history to which you refer, how do we understand our experiences of supermarkets, airports and motorways? These spaces are omnipresent, but relate to functional requirements and global logics rather than the places they inhabit. They abstract us from the world through an environment in which we cannot locate ourselves, and strip us of any need for our identity; we need only follow the instructions of the signage which directs us in our anonymity. In the supermarket we need take very little responsibility, instead entering into a solitary contract. We wander, read labels, compare products in an environment of absolute artificiality. The lighting, ventilation and music are

Virilio, Paul; (1997) Open Sky; Verso: London; p. 2226

Virilio, Paul; (1997) p. 2627

Augé, Marc; p. 8328

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all fine-tuned such that we forget anything beyond the logic at work and our relation to it. All occupants are treated in the same way; they obey the same codes and respond to the same messages. And yet they need not correspond with each other; they are necessarily distant from those alongside them, maintaining the ‘solitary contractuality’ of their experience.29

The above discussions present an extreme of the discussion of place. However it is to this extreme that contemporary trends are moving. Here we may recognise a parallel with the idea of reciprocity from previous discussions of death. As we lose touch with notions of localised culture in favour of universal systems of thought, commerce and communication; the architecture we build is inscribed with less and less cultural meaning. Equally, through our continued exposure to a ‘globalised’ architecture, we lose our grasp on localised culture. Architecture then, holds the possibility of allowing us to reconnect with notions of place, resisting the overall trend acting against them. The following discussions aim to develop such a counterpoint; presenting particular attitudes which give the designer some tools by which he or she can effect an architecture of resistance.



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Part 2: Getting Back into Place

Body

We will begin by looking at the role of the multi-sensory body as the primary means by which we interpret our surroundings, and thus as opposed to the concept of the reductive, dimensional characteristics of abstract space: ‘the body is the organism whose states regulate our cognisance of the world. The unity of the perceptual field therefore must be a unity of bodily experience.’30 The idea of orientation as relating to x, y and z axes on a Cartesian grid is a difficult one if we consider the means by which we orient ourselves in daily life. ‘Positions’, as experienced, are inherently relational. We orientate ourselves not by cardinal points (“I’m heading West” seems counter-intuitive), but by relating ourselves as going to somewhere from somewhere. This necessarily involves a placement of the body between places which are instinctively recognisable; something locations on an abstract field can by no means be perceived. By considering our understanding of the world as being conditioned by a ‘lived body’ as posited by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty,31 we begin to develop a view of our relation to the word being fundamentally reciprocal. We are not an abstract entity placed on the world as an observer, indifferently moving through space; but instead are immersed within the world by means of our perceptual faculties: ‘As far as bodily space is concerned, it is clear that here is a knowledge of place which is reducible to a sort of co-existence with that place’.32 What becomes of particular importance here, is the understanding that it is the relationship between ourselves and our environment, rather than either individually, which conditions our understanding of place: ‘as places are sensed, senses are placed, and as places make sense, senses make place.’33 Bearing that in mind, we must consider the importance of our environment, not only as a backdrop which engages our perceptive faculties, but as a carrier of cultural meaning.

Whitehead, Alfred North; (1967) Science and the Modern World; The Fee Press; New York; p. 9130

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice; (2002) Phenomenology of Perception; Routledge; London; p. 10532

Casey, Edward, S.;The Fate of Place : A Philosophical History; pp. 216-23831

Connerton, Paul; (2009) How Modernity Forgets; Cambidge University Press; Cambridge; p. 3333

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Memory

If the discussions of the body as a way into place are relating inherently to the immediate, what they are lacking is a consideration of how these environments come to gain the very ‘character’ which makes them recognisable and meaningful to us; how we remember them. The theme of perceptive reciprocity with our environment continues to be useful in our examination of memory: We understand memory as being reliant on the stability of concrete place, as well as relating to the human body and occurring at a human scale.34 We thus understand memory as necessarily related to our bodily immersion in the world, as discussed above; and a sense of place being dependent on a complex interplay of visual, auditory and olfactory memories; which are in turn dependent on the concrete places which condition them.35 Our memory of a place, and the habitual corporeality of repeated experience, build the familiarity with place which allows one to ‘live’ it and thus ‘make it one’s own’.36

These places of stability do, however, play a greater role in the discussion of memory than as static, recognisable loci. If we begin to look at what it is that makes places memorable, what it is that differs between particular environments, we find the notions latent in discussions of place: ‘we may say that most groups ... engrave their form in some way upon the soil and retrieve their collective remembrances within the spatial framework thus defined.’37 Thus when we relate to places as familiar, we are not only relating to the spatial frameworks by which we orientate ourselves, we are relating to the cultural past of the society in which we are immersed. In place we are constantly being implicitly reminded of the past, not in terms of the novel study of history which can be manipulated for particular ends; but in terms of our concrete relation with the formative past of our physical setting: ‘The inhabitant of anthropological place does not make history; he lives in it.’38 Again, we must recognise that

Connerton, Paul; How Modernity Forgets; p.5 34

Halbwachs, Maurice; (1980) The Collective Memory; Harper and Row; New York; p. 14 37





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this cultural framework is more than just a backdrop to which we relate. We are fundamentally conditioned by the culture within which we are immersed. Our perception and memory are educated by the material frameworks to which we have become habitually connected, and the meanings extracted from specific signifiers may very drastically with cultural background. The example of rural Italians faced with a modern toilet for the first time is an indicative one: Accustomed as they were to dealing with bodily functions in the fields, they took to using the toilets as cleaning bowls for their olives; suspending them in a net and flushing repeatedly. What we would see, and what they saw, are very different opportunities.39

An immersive and reciprocal relation to the past generates a useful tie if we are to further consider the discussions of commemoration raised in Chapter 1. Acts of commemoration and remembrance are inherently repetitive; they are conditioned by generations of continued observance, and as such, provide a vehicle by which we are brought into proximity with the past. These rituals call for direct participation on the part of the commemorators: specific bodily actions and conditioned speech. It is repetition and structure of these ritualised actions by which the past is made accessible.40 Learning from the above discussions of memory, we recognise that commemoration, as with memory, is dependent on a concrete place by which we spatialise that memory. Armistice day commemorations provide a fitting example of this; Whilst a minute’s silence is observed regardless of location, anyone observing that silence in Britain will visualise the placing of wreaths on the cenotaph. It is arguable that it is the material presence of the cenotaph itself which provides a mainstay for the continuation of such a memorial practice: ‘Habits relating to a specific physical setting resist the forces tending to change them.’41

Harries, Karsten; (1997) The Ethical Function of Architecture; MIT Press; Massachusetts p. 9039

Casey, Edward, S.; (1987) Remembering : A Phenomenological Study; Indiana University Press; Bloomington; p. 21840

Halbwachs, Maurice; (1980) The Collective Memory; Harper and Row; New York; p. 1441

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Ritual MainstayCenotaph, London

Fig5


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We thus reach a point where we can consider the importance of ‘situated’ burial architecture. An architecture which generates a strong character by means of its relation to its cultural past generates an ‘existential foothold’42 by which we can locate ourselves within the world, and within the trajectory of our cultural tradition. Conditioned as we are to interpret our perceptions on a cultural level, an architecture that relates to place presents the opportunity of directly relating to the particular cultural traditions surrounding death, allowing us to recognise it more fully and more genuinely. The theme of anchorage also becomes useful in a consideration of situated burial architecture. If we understand the physical setting of a cultural or commemorative practice as providing a mainstay by which that practice is preserved, we can begin to understand burial places as ‘cultural anchors’ of sorts; preserving a facet of the cultural heritage which is being eroded. By looking to considerations of place itself, we may gain an insight into how this may be achieved.

Inscribing Place

If the above discussions of body and memory begin to set out a way into place by means of our understanding of it, what they are lacking is a discussion of the concrete ways in which the places are behaving, the ‘character’ they present, and the manner in which they carry meaning. We thus return to Heidegger. Heidegger discusses the agency of building as being fundamentally related to ‘dwelling’; ‘The way in which you are and I am, the manner in which we humans are on the earth, is Baun, dwelling’.43 Dwelling is discussed as synonymous with building; allowing the ‘fourfold’; Heidegger’s categorisation of the world into earth, sky divinities and mortals (a categorisation which aims to fully understand the phenomenal world, and allow us to come to terms with our lace in it), to ‘gather’ in its ‘simple oneness’ in everyday things. We may understand this as stating

Norberg-Schulz, Christian; (1980) Genius Loci : Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture; Rizzoli; New York42

Heidegger, Martin; Building Dwelling Thinking; p. 14743

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The Bridge Fig6


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hat the fundamental aim of architecture is to bring forth, and make visible and coherent, the tangible phenomena of the world in relation to how we, as humans, relate to them. In referring to the ‘fourfold’ as behaving in ‘simple oneness’, Heidegger is critiquing the empirical tools by which we reduce the world to constituents, by arguing that human constructions ‘gather’ the phenomena of the world into their nature as a coherent totality. In order to make sense of this, it is helpful to look at two examples used by Heidegger; the bridge and the Black Forest farmhouse.

What one may interpret Heidegger as saying here is not that which he explicitly states. We understand the role of the bridge as allowing the stream to make sense for the human who happens across it. The banks are banks of a river, which relate to each other inasmuch as they have been exposed by the passage of water which erodes the ground. But prior to the building of the bridge, these phenomena were indifferent to the passage of the human being. Human beings makes sense of, and orientate themselves within, their surroundings by way of what they offer them, how they are constructed for them, and how the are perceived by the lived body. The bridge thus ‘gathers the landscape’ inasmuch as it brings the scale of the landscape down to the scale of a

The bridge swings over the stream with ease and power. It does not just connect banks that are already there. The banks emerge as banks only as the bridge crosses the stream. The bridge designedly causes them to lie across from each other. One side is set off against the other by the bridge. Nor do the banks stretch along the stream as indifferent border strips of the dry land. With the banks, the bridge brings to the stream the one and the other expanse of the landscape lying behind them. It brings stream and bank and land into each other’s neighborhood. The bridge gathers the earth as landscape around the stream.44Heidegger, Martin; Building Dwelling Thinking;

p. 15244

2 Place


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Black Forest Farmhouse Fig7


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human body by means of its construction. It makes it accessible, and thus comprehensible allowing the uncovering of meaning relevant to us. The farmhouse furthers this understanding:

The ‘character’ of the built construction in this context can be seen to be related inherently to its dealing with the climate; a factor which becomes meaningful in its mediation between the scale of the transient climatic phenomena, and the scale of the human being. The placement of the building in the shelter of a slope to deal with wind; near the spring to allow for the collection of water; the pitch and extent of the roof which deal with snow; the orientation to the south which benefits from the light of the sun whilst allowing the occupants to follow its shifting trajectory throughout the day and the year: bring these phenomena to the awareness of the occupants of the house by allowing their behaviour to make sense in relation to their own body. The house and the objects within it speak of more than functional relations to the world. They are more than simply shelter and tools. They speak to the occupants through the cultural symbolism built up through generations of tradition. The hearth is more than a source of heat, the threshold more than an entrance, the plough more than a tool. The differentiation between positions of ‘child-bed’ and coffin

It placed the farm on the wind-sheltered mountain slope, looking south, among the meadows close to the spring. It gave it its wide overhanging shingle roof whose proper slope bears up under the burden of snow, and which, reaching deep down, shields the chambers against the storms of the long winter-nights. It did not forget the altar corner behind the community table; it made room in its chamber for the hallowed places of childbed and the “’tree of the dead” for that is what they call a coffin there: the Totenbaum and in this way it designed for the different generations under one roof the character of their journey through time.45Heidegger, Martin; Building Dwelling Thinking;

p. 16045

2 Place


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also carry specific sacred meaning, mapping the passage of those who live there as they progress through life; allowing in turn the temporality of the lifespan to be mapped against the various temporalities of the world (day, season, year) which are admitted into the house. We are thus given some potent cues as to how we may consider an architecture which locates us both physically and temporally. While Heidegger at no point considered his writing to be specifically instructional for the architect, we may begin to extrapolate and consider the methods by which one can instil meaning in a construction. We may identify a clue to the discussion in the overlap between locality and temporality. If one is to posit a contemporary architecture of place, how can this be achieved without blindly appropriating past forms, or recourse to sentimentality? Here we look to the notion of ‘Critical Regionalism’ developed by Kenneth Frampton. He sees a way forward from the contemporary predicament in an architecture which takes an ‘arrière-garde’ position: a position of resistance which distances itself equally from the ‘enlightenment myth of progress’ and from a reactionary impulse to return to the ‘forms of the pre-industrial past’.46 He proposes that this is achievable through an architecture which draws indirectly from the peculiarities of a place; making use of a local tectonic mode, drawing inspiration from the range and quality of the local light, or ‘cultivating’ a particular topography. However, it must maintain a significant level of critical interpretation and in doing so, must engage with its own particular moment in architectural discourse, rather than aiming to recover an architecture of the past by means of decontextualised signifiers which become devoid of their cultural symbolism Such an architecture must develop a play between the ‘rationality of normative technique’ and the ‘arationality of idiosyncratic form’47 to generate an architecture which is of both time and place. It must also recognise the agency

Frampton, Kenneth; (1998) Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance; in The Anti-

Aesthetic : Essays on Postmodern Culture; The New Press, New York; p. 22 46

Frampton, Kenneth; p. 25 47


33

f the construction in conditioning the multi-sensory experience of the built form in the face of the modern hegemony of vision: ‘the intensity of light, darkness, heat and cold; the feeling of humidity; the aroma of material; the almost palpable presence of masonry as the body senses its own confinement; the momentum of an induced gait ... the echoing resonance of our own footfall.’48

Heidegger’s influence is implicit throughout Frampton’s text: in first outlining a relation to the phenomena of the world, and then by positing means by which the perceptual faculties may be engaged (as the ‘lived body’) to generate a tie to these phenomena; we can see distinct parallels with the above discussions of the bridge and the farmhouse. We can understand this approach as attempting to engage with the formative structures which have conditioned the buildings which already exist in a given place, and thus as relating to the traditional cultural meaning which make them strong loci of memory, without recourse to empty signs. As such we can begin to recognise the means by which a contemporary architecture which relates to the individual and to its cultural heritage can be achieved.

We may understand then, that an architecture which relates to place bears meaning by bringing qualities, phenomena and temporalities of the world and the symbolic meaning born of cultural tradition to the comprehension of the human being. By doing so, it allows the individual to locate themselves within the rhythms and time frames of the world and of their culture. The earlier discussions of the awareness of one’s own finitude which arise in considerations of death now become supplemented and reinforced. Placing one’s temporality (one which is finite) in broader worldly and cultural temporalities such could be considered to ease the apprehension which is the cause of the denial of death, and allow one the reassurance to authentically engage with it: ‘We, and those whom we hold dear, constitute only a few units in this multitude.’49

Kenneth Frampton; p. 3148

Halbwachs, Maurice; p. 349

2 Place


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35

In the face of the abstract thinking which are subtly eroding our understanding of place, architectures which deal with death may be able to reciprocate this aid. By providing a stable locus which reinterprets cultural meaning into a contemporary context, and around which commemorative rituals are enacted; burial architecture serves to preserve and perpetuate both, generating an ‘anchor’ by which a vital constituent of local heritage may be maintained. This static locus preserves itself as a point of stability amidst a situation of drastic flux and change, and thus resists the forces acting to alter it. It is with all of the above considerations in mind that we look to the first example.

2 Place


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Entrance Fig8


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The previous chapter, in its discussions of the notion of critical regionalism, sets up a discussion in which we consider the possibility of preserving an anchor of cultural meaning whilst re-interpreting the architectural grammar which carries it. Such an approach is necessary if an architecture of place is to avoid simply mimicking the forms of the past. In carrying out such an interpretation however, there is a danger of losing certain facets of the meaning we had hoped to preserve. In the design of burial architecture, such translation must thus be carried out with the utmost care. It is with these considerations in mind that we look to the Brion cemetery designed by Carlo Scarpa.

An Architecture of Composition, Craft and Place.

The cemetery was commissioned in 1969 by a founder of a successful Italian industrial enterprise, the Brion-Vega. The commission was for a family plot adjoining a small existing cemetery in Treviso, near Venice. The complex is enclosed by an outer wall; at times vertical, at times sloping to generate counter-intuitive shadow, and at times punctured to allow fractured views of the landscape beyond. This outer enclosure means that the scheme takes the reinterpreted form of the ‘camposanto’; the walled ‘holy field’ of traditional Italian burial grounds. It thus looks inward, distanced from its surroundings: ‘the work is subtly yet decisively ‘alienated’ from its context, suspended in its own specific time, snatched from spatial and temporal indefinition.’50 It is an architecture of fragments, one which does not allow a singular view or composition: the individual elements; the chapel, the Brion tomb itself, the family tomb, the aedicule; are distinct, none constituting a definite goal. Estranged from each other, they are woven back together through repeated motif and material; measured ‘stepping’ of the concrete structure speaking of continuity despite the fragmentation of the scheme, and channels and pools of

3Brion Cemetery, TrevisoCarlo Scarpa

Dal Co, Francesco and Mazzariol, Guiseppe; (1986) Carlo Scarpa, The Complete Works; The Architectural Press; London; p. 7950


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water indicating possible movement. Rafael Moneo likens Scarpa’s architecture to that of a Venetian painter. It is composed to be considered and reconsidered;

The architecture thus operates between the scale of the overall composition and the scale of the ‘brushstroke’; the ever-present register of the craftsman’s hand. There are no sheer surfaces or abstract details; in the board-marked concrete, the mindful timber joints, the delicate mosaics; the architecture carries the traces of the body at every point, following the inherent nature of the material and allowing us an insight into its essence and the means of its manipulation. The detailing of the construction speaks of more than the body however. There is an inherent ‘Venetian-ness’ in the detailing of the construction speaks of more than the body however. There is an inherent ‘Venetian-ness’ in the manipulation of light, texture, colour and material. We see in the Brion cemetery, possibly more than any of his other works, as displaying Scarpa’s deep-rooted and profound connection to his native culture. Drawing that culture into his architecture, he displays a fearful self-consciousness of only ‘graz[ing] the ‘cliche’’.52 As such his design process was one of remarkable maturity, at times ‘torturous’ in its care. The collective memory is engaged, but through implicit rather than explicit signifiers; ‘the reference to place is used as a fixed point with respect to which

One’s eyes are charmed by so many attractions, wandering without being able to fix on a point ... We pass from interpretation of the scene constituting the content of the painting to contemplation of the aspects and forms of the protagonists - to careful observation of the way the figures’ outline is made to stand out against the background, the pleasure evoked by the landscape represented, the curiosity we feel for the supporting structure, the pleasure given by the quality of the brushstroke.51

Dal Co, Francesco and Mazzariol, Guiseppe; p. 23651

Futugawa, Yokio (ed.) and Portoghesi, Paolo; (1979) GA 50, Carlo Scarpa, Cemetery Brion-Vega, S. Vito, Treviso, Italy, 1970-72; A.D.A Edita; Tokyo; Folio size without page numbers.52

‘Passage over Water’Fig.9

3 Brion Cemetery, Treviso


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Brion Tomb Fig10


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tvthe diversity and unforeseeable quality of the form is valued’.53 For Scarpa, Venice was a ‘way of seeing and using’; the memories and perception of a people conditioned by a very particular set of patterns and habits. It is seen here ‘in fragments, in bold sections, which no one will ever be able to recompose in a naturalistic image’.54 The flickering light reflected from water, the concrete steps which rise up from beneath it, the colourful mosaics, the angular passages between orthogonal surfaces; all speak to the multi-sensory perception of one familiar with the interplay between water, stone, glass and colour so typical of Venice.

An Architecture of Symbol

The above discussions must be recognised as only skimming the surface of the deep and multifaceted meaning that the architecture connotes. The cemetery defines itself dialectically acting between a set of binary oppositions; distinguishing itself as the distant from life, but not wholly submitting to the realm of death. It thus behaves as a place of transition, an allegorical ‘passage’ symbolic of the meeting of opposites, ‘since ‘life and death are ultimately only two faces of a single change of state’.55 Rather than employing the monumentality of typical sepulchral architecture, which Scarpa likens to ‘shoe boxes’,56 the architecture takes on the form of a ‘symbolic exchanger’; a set of multilayered possible interpretations borne of ambiguous signifiers. By creating an architecture of fragmentation, Scarpa negates the possibility of a single hermeneutical narrative: ‘This ‘dissolving of syntax’ allows Scarpa free play with the ‘figures’, the running sequence of assonant phrases, the play of allusions, the unfolding of potential associations in the mind of both the architect and the observer,’57 This landscape of references generates a complex interplay of recognition and recomposition borne of his deep engagement with the potent symbolism of his lived cultural heritage. By looking to the Brion tomb, a single

Futugawa, Yokio (ed.) and Portoghesi, Paolo; Folio size without page numbers.53

Futugawa, Yokio (ed.) and Portoghesi, Paolo; Folio size without page numbers.54


Herausgeber, Peter Noever; (1989) The Other City; Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn; Berlin; p. 1856




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Drawing of Chapel Fig11


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fragment in this broader play, we gain an insight into such layering and ambiguity. In a lecture in 1976, Scarpa describes it as an arcosolium; ‘nothing more than a simple arch from the Catholic tradition’.58 His choice of words whilst making this modest statement already hint that he is veiling further layered meaning. The word arca in Italian, etymologically linked to arcosolium, means both ark and sarcophagus, drawing to mind the burial barge of Venetain tradition. If we were then to reconsider the form with the idea of an upturned boat in mind, it is no less convincing; the stepping motif which is employed elsewhere to blur and soften harsh outlines here confuses the connection of the ‘arch’ with the ground, giving it the appearance of floating. We would at this point begin to consider the relationship to water; another ‘figure’ which features in this interpretative play. The importance of the final passage over water, a deep-rooted image in the Venetian understanding of death, is already signified at the entrance to the chapel by means of stepping stones over a one of the pools. However, the water too is imbued with alternative meaning, drawing to mind imagery of the canals of Islamic gardens, themselves representative of the four rivers of paradise of the Koran; Oriental gardens, of which the Venetian would be familiar due to mercantile activity with Asia; or the spring, a symbol of continuing life. The scheme is saturated with such cultural iconography, however, it is not the bland iconography we would usually associate with historical interpretation. It is not a merely an architectural grammar, recalling a collection of mute facts. Rather it is an interpretation of the deep cultural meaning which underlies that grammar into new symbolic form. Unlike the passive simile of the reactionary Post-modernism which was soon to follow, Brion cemetery resonates with the collective memory of its context by connoting sub-meaning directly linked to the collective heritage of its culture.

Herausgeber, Peter Noever; p. 1858



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Chapel Exterior Fig13

Chapel Interior Fig12


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Preservation through Re-presentation

Moneo’s discussion of Scarpa as an artist is a useful one in the consideration of how his architecture preserves the cultural meaning it carries. When we consider the work of art in a gallery, it is the gallery itself, and the ‘inhibitory action of distance’59 that it facilitates, which allows us to view that work of art in a new light:

It can be considered that the Brion cemetery is acting in a very similar way. By generating a break from the ‘world of life’ it is not only acting as an allegory for the passage to death. The atmosphere of peace and contemplation which is so commonly discussed in relation to the cemetery is one which provides a parallel with that of the gallery. In reinterpreting and re-presenting the deep cultural meaning embodied in the rituals surrounding death and the intuitive familiarity and character of place, Scarpa brings that meaning to the fore. It is thus that the project allows us to meaningfully address the nature of our existence as finite. As a consideration which is so often overlooked and suppressed, we are rarely brought into contact with the notion of our own passing. By re-presenting the notion of death and the deep-running cultural rituals which deal with it; and making them explicitly the primary object of consideration; we are delivered to a state of recognition. Manfredo Tafuri further recognises a parallel between Scarpa’s architecture and the painting of Paul Klee, with whom he was well acquainted from as early as 194861.

An obvious way of transforming something familiar and therefore all too readily overlooked into an aesthetic object is quite literally to re-present it by displacing or translating it, as we do when we carry it into a new environment, place it on a pedestal, or put it in a frame.60

Harries, Karsten; The Ethical Function of Architecture; p. 12359

Harries, Karsten; The Ethical Function of Architecture; p. 12360

Dal Co, Francesco and Mazzariol, Guiseppe; pp. 86-8961



46

Passageway Fig14


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Scarpa similarly resists the idea of chronological, historical time in this project. It looks to draw out what is constant or diachronic, the bass-line which conditions the shifting historical paradigms and their interpretations. The synchronic ‘figures’ employed lend themselves to an endless process of deciphering and reinterpretation, but the rooted meaning they carry, so ingrained in the culture of Venice and the Veneto, will continue to be carried into the future.

The extension of memory and the contraction of experience into choices that are necessarily definite yet open to concatenation become translated into enigmatic forms, not out of any love of esotericism, but in order to permit a dialogue with future experiences, to enable interpretation to create breaks in the continuity of space-time.62




48

Plan Fig15


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Architectures of death have so far been discussed as having the key role of maintaining and preserving cultural practices. Such an architecture provides a material mainstay around which these practices are enacted, that preserves’ them through it’s persisting presence. We may consider that by the same logic, such an architecture could also behave as a mechanism of cultural construction and negotiation, shifting but reiterating ideas of mortality, heritage and identity through alterations of our conception of the ‘anchor’ that maintains them. Such change need not be considered negative. Culture is not a static phenomenon, but one which is continuously reinterpreting itself and redefining its terms. However, one would argue that if this were to be the case, such a task must be approached with the utmost caution and critical self-consciousness. It must be performed in the knowledge of the cultural past of it’s context and must do so to translate the ideas harboured in the past into a contemporary circumstance. It is with these considerations in mind, that we look to Igualada cemetery in Catalonia.

An Architecture of Cycle and Dissolution The cemetery was designed by Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós in 1985 in response to a competition brief to design the local cemetery for the municipality of Igualada, outside Barcelona. It is literally sunk into the ground, the architecture defined as furrows which appear to have been eroded from or carved out of the landscape. The main features are simple; the entrance, a chapel, a mortuary just beyond and the burial niches ‘built into sinuous ridges that guide the visitor within and below into the site’63 Conceived as a path, the architecture takes the form of a street of sorts, if one which reads as carved from the ground. A public, social space, the path follows a processional route from the entrance, via the chapel, finally descending to the burial area. Along this path, the designers play with the relationship

4Igualada Cemetery, CataloniaEnric Miralles & Carme Pinós

Zabalbeascoa, Anatxu; (1996) Igualada Cemetery: Enric Miralles and Carme Pinos; Phaidon; London; p. 463


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between the individual and the site; overlapping planes, floating horizontals, sloping walls and dynamic structures develop a complex spatial parallax, whilst the construction is tailored to the movement of the body with ramps, decks and benches encouraging motion and pause.64

The temporality of the fleeting body is understood as but one of a taxonomy of temporal scales operating on and throughout the project, with the registration of the passage of time becoming the central metaphorical move of the architecture. The layering which allows for the visual parallax experienced by the visitor also conditions the interplay of light and shade throughout the scheme; an interplay which tempers and registers the ever shifting patterns of light throughout the day and the year, allowing them to become coherent and thus be experienced. The trees and ground planting further condition this temporality; altering the shadows and hues with the seasons, whilst their continued growth contributes to a broader temporal trajectory, covering the architecture over time. This rhythm of growth resonates and is juxtaposed with, a further temporality of corrosion and decay: ‘At Igualada, one has the feeling that it is just a small matter of decades before the earth and rock contained by mesh wire here spill inward, and the trees and plants that have already begun to encroach on the area, overgrow it completely’65

The detailing of the concrete surfaces and the metal gates and plaques to rust and discolour echo the volatility of the topography in a language of erosion. Engaging with its own dissolution, such an architecture makes explicit its own impermanence, placing itself in a broader trend of decay and regrowth.

Finding Place through Intuition For Miralles in particular, design is recognised as an investigative tool by which one can come to understand the intricacies of the architectural site, and thus uncover and relate to their nature

Zabalbeascoa, Anatxu; p. 1564


Shifting LightFig.16

4 Igualada Cemetery, Catalonia


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Fig17


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and their past. He believes that the only way to truly recognise the potency of the work of a designer or the character of a place, is through the care and attention devoted to one’s own work in relation to that influence. The design process which led to this scheme can be considered to be one of sensibility and intuition: ‘This linking of programme with a sense of time, place and presence, is methodically thought out, but always with the help of the essential tool of intuition as a guide.’66

His work can thus be understood as seeking to draw out the ‘pre-existing traces in the cultural landscapes of each project’, locating the programme in the broader memory of the site and culture as a means to bring that memory into the present, rather than through explicit claims of contextualisation.67 As such, the cemetery does not explicitly evoke the traditional typology of a Catalan burial ground; the campo santo model discussed in chapter 3. The burial niches take on the form of those in Montjuïc Cemetery on the outskirts of Barcelona, however, the rest of the project is so vastly different from Igualada that it could hardly be considered an influence. The cemetery instead resonates with the material history of the site; the interventions responding to and probing into the topography. The entire scheme invokes the image of the ghost of the river which once flowed through it, whilst the ‘path’ explores that tension between the the old and the new, opening up a dialogue with the site. Whilst the project makes no explicit claims of contextualising referents, one cannot fail to notice a sculptural quality in the work which is highly reminiscent of the material culture of Barcelona. The cast concrete forms of the furrowed interventions in the land speak of the flowing shapes of the the Modernisme. Miralles, as a native of the city, who’s architectural education had taken place there, was deeply conditioned by that culture,citing the architects of the Catalan Art Nouveau; in particular Antoni Gaudí and Josep Maria Jujo; as defining influences.68

Through his immersion in the particular culture of the region, and






54

Entrance Fig18

Burial Niches Fig19


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the considered treatment of the local quality of light throughout; Miralles intuitively produces an architecture of local character.

Preservation through Temporality

In a cultural environment in which we have ever decreasing contact with religion, it becomes less explicit how we inscribe meaning to our understanding of death in the architecture which commemorates it. Where previously, sepulchres would have celebrated the afterlife by ‘ris[ing] up against the fleeting world around them’,69 we relate much less powerfully to such imagery today. We are left with the question of how to commemorate death without recourse to imagery which has lost its meaning and the subsequent risk of obsolescence. How to re-interpret attitudes to, and architectural manifestations of, death in a contemporary context. We may thus acknowledge a potential flaw in the project in relation to our discussion of the cultural role of burial landscapes. If one of the key agencies of burial architecture is to preserve a stable locus to which burial customs may be anchored, surely an architecture which submits so utterly to concepts of transience and flux could be considered to be acting counter to this aim; potentially eroding the cultural practices we had hoped it would preserve. What then, can we see Igualada as contributing to a discussion of death? It is precisely through its engagement with flux, cycle and temporality that Igualada makes a true contribution to contemporary discussions of death. The cemetery, by engaging with notions of decay and regrowth, places the perception of death into a broader cycle of natural processes. It can thus be understood as negating the modern understanding of life and death as necessarily opposed, grounding a metaphor for continuity in the regenerative quality of nature rather than in abelief in the eternal existence of the afterlife.70 One may argue that it is precisely through these cyclical temporalities that,

Robinson, Joel David; p. 370

Robinson, Joel David; (2005) Death and the Cultural Landscape (On the Cemetery as a Monument to Nature); Presented in 10th International Seminar, Cultural Landscapes in the 21st Century; Newcastle upon Tyne, April 2005; p. 369



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‘Ghosted’ River Fig20

Burial Niches Fig21


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similarly to the repetitive nature of commemorative practice discussed in chapter 2, we are given a vehicle by which we can connect with the past and project towards the future. Similarly, by placing the notion of human life as a temporality amongst broader and narrower scales of flux, we are brought closer to the notion of our own finitude, through the knowledge that these cycles contribute to a broader natural trajectory. Miralles intended the cemetery to be ‘closer to those still alive than to the dead, but with some kind of interplay between the dead and the living.’71 The architecture is by no means that of the monumentality of the ‘cities of the dead’ of the previous century. The dead are neither sanctified nor neglected, they simply occupy their place in the landscape, as do the living. By allowing life and growth in the form of people, planting and natural rhythm to permeate the site, the cemetery actively denies the assumption that death is the antithesis of life. This ‘valley of the dead’ is understood as a place of life. It is through its denial of monumentality that the cemetery reinterprets the meaning of the commemorative rituals surrounding death. By designing the project as a path through the landscape, the cemetery actively acknowledges the role of the funerary procession from the chapel to the grave; one which descends into the ground, enclosing the burial ceremony in the land. The path, which at times of burial is transfigured by this ceremony, inscribes this final journey into the landscape, preserving cultural ritual alongside the reinterpreted conception of death. The cemetery thus acts as a mediative material intervention between the cultural practices it inscribes and the repetitive temporalities of natural processes it registers. By doing so, it preserves these practices in the present and projects them into the future by relying on the very notions of transience we would have assumed would be acting against them.




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Reflections

In Western culture, the attitudes to the treatment of death are heavily rooted in the authority of Christianity and its system of beliefs. Much of the commemorative ritual surrounding death has its roots in the belief in the afterlife; in the meeting of certain requirements of a good death in preparation for transition into such an eternity. Similarly, the burial architecture of the generation preceding our own draws heavily on this notion of eternity, attempting to symbolise it through an architecture of permanence. However, we are increasingly moving away from religion and the authority of the biblical text; the very authority which underpins the collective understanding necessary to preserve the meaning in Christian symbolism. Whilst an architecture of Christian symbolism does not completely lose its potency, its ability to speak to us (the image of the cross is still powerful even if we do not follow Christian beliefs), our ability to interpret the deeper meaning reinforced by Scripture is lost. In looking to notions of place throughout the course of the above discussions, one acknowledges the fact that burial customs are also inherently localised within specific cultures. It is these specific cultures that individuate the ritual surrounding death, layering in further meaning. The two projects we have examined can both be seen to be translating attitudes toward death; representing them with architectures not necessarily reliant on the authority of biblical text, but which build strong ties to the places and cultures in which they are located. Having considered those examples separately, it may prove useful to examine the points at which the attitudes they present to death and place converge and diverge. The projects were designed only 16 years apart, both in countries of Catholic faith which bore very similar burial typologies (for example the shared heritage of the camposanto). Considering their parallel aims in reinterpreting what are similar rituals

Alter, Brion ChapelFig.22


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and built forms, it is surprising how different the adopted approaches turned out to be. Scarpa’s cemetery still draws implicitly on the notion of the afterlife, the architecture understood as being in between; a transition from life to death, rooting into the Christian tradition. This is not however, where the real meaning of the project lies. It draws on deep-set cultural (rather than explicitly Christian) symbolism, subtly shifting the focus from one to the other as a means to transfer spiritual meaning. Miralles takes a more radical approach; by engaging utterly with natural phenomena and with the land, he dismisses the notion of the afterlife. Life and death are no longer given dialectically, but as naturally connected processes of growth and decay. Continuity is given as the natural order. Considerations of time are another point of divergence. Scarpa’s architecture seeks to go beyond time; to resist the structured chronology of historical narrative by accessing the diachronic sub-meanings which persist despite it. Whereas, Miralles’ architecture submits utterly to notions of time; projecting cultural meaning by relating it to continuous, repetitive cycles of flux. One is an architecture of abstraction from the world, the other of immersion within it. However, despite these considerable differences, both can be seen as successful in terms of translating a consideration of death into an understanding of place.; thus providing the ‘cultural anchor’ which preserves those considerations and resists the forces acting to erode them. We thus reach a point where we can reconsider the role of a contemporary burial architecture in relation the quote with which we set out: ‘To be a human being means to be on the earth as mortal. It means to dwell.’72 Architecture must be recognised as having the ability to ‘make conspicuous the usually taken for granted and hardly noticed’.73 By making tangible and coherent that which is often overlooked, architecture ‘makes visible’ the fundamental nature of our understanding of self and of our relation to our culture. Both of the projects discussed above make

Heidegger, Martin; Building Dwelling Thinking; p. 147 72

Harries, Karsten; The Ethical Function of Architecture; p. 118 73


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us aware of what it is to be mortal; to live in acceptance of our finitude. They provide us with a support, a method of gaining existential reassurance in the face of considerations of this loss-of-self: Brion through the deep connection with familiar cultural symbols; Igualada through the placement in a continuing natural trajectory. Both allow us to consider what it is to be on the earth: Brion through profound connection with the specific culture of Venice; Igualada through specific interventions in a natural context in Catalonia. Thus both can equally be considered to be Bauen, building in the genuine sense, which allows us to dwell, and thus understand our place in our culture and in the world.


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Ariès, Phillipe; (2009) Western Attitudes to Death; Marion Boyers; London

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Illustrations

Fig. 1 http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3383/3425379881_9afd6b747c_b_d.jpgFig. 2 http://www.flickr.com/photos/_pauls/173754243/Fig. 3 http://www.traveladventures.org/continents/europe/perelachaise03.shtmlFig. 4 http://www.flickr.com/photos/puffmagic/3482852487/Fig. 5 http://www.flickr.com/photos/defenceimages/6298579799/sizes/l/in/photostream/Fig. 6 http://www.velopeloton.com/col-du-soulor-col-daubisque/Fig. 7 Harries, Karsten; (1983) Thoughts on a Non-Arbitrary Architecture; in Perspecta, Vol. 20 , p. 17Fig. 8 Futugawa, Yokio (ed.) and Portoghesi, Paolo; (1979) GA 50, Carlo Scarpa, Cemetery Brion-Vega, S. Vito, Treviso, Italy, 1970-72; A.D.A Edita; Tokyo; Folio size without page numbers.Fig. 9 http://weekster.blogspot.co.uk/2010_04_01_archive.htmlFig. 10 http://www.flickr.com/photos/kymak/1072771626/sizes/z/in/photostream/Fig. 11 Futugawa, Yokio (ed.) and Portoghesi, Paolo; (1979) GA 50, Carlo Scarpa, Cemetery Brion-Vega, S. Vito, Treviso, Italy, 1970-72; A.D.A Edita; Tokyo; Folio size without page numbers.Fig. 12 http://wvcarch64.wordpress.com/2009/02/21/carlo-scarpa-brioni-cemetery-video/Fig. 13 http://www.fubiz.net/galleries/set/rufus-knight/photo/3078350665/Fig. 14Futugawa, Yokio (ed.) and Portoghesi, Paolo; (1979) GA 50, Carlo Scarpa, Cemetery Brion-Vega, S. Vito, Treviso, Italy, 1970-72; A.D.A Edita; Tokyo; Folio size without page numbers.Fig. 15http://co-zine.tumblr.com/post/8656174399/110808-enric-miralles-plan-of-the-cemetery-atFig. 16 http://www.flickr.com/photos/lmblock/4726654426/Fig. 17 http://www.flickr.com/photos/abthomas/4913660170/Fig. 18 http://www.flickr.com/photos/dharmesh84/4581882912/Fig. 19 http://www.mimoa.eu/projects/Spain/Igualada/Igualada%20CemeteryFig. 20 http://www.bryanboyer.com/notes/2006-02-12.phpFig. 21 http://www.flickr.com/photos/garrettrock/6063794192/Fig. 22Futugawa, Yokio (ed.) and Portoghesi, Paolo; (1979) GA 50, Carlo Scarpa, Cemetery Brion-Vega, S. Vito, Treviso, Italy, 1970-72; A.D.A Edita; Tokyo; Folio size without page numbers.

[all online images retrieved 24/4/12]

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Architectures of Death

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