dead cocept

Introduction	Death can remove or cause fear. Early societies viewed death as common as birth. The two would walk hand in hand. The struggle for survival was dictated by prevention of an inevitable outcome. Death was a continuation of the cycle, a circle closing in on itself and becoming complete. Science can only explain the physical ramifications of death. Religion and belief has been given the task of explaining death, either to understand it or to communicate what comes after. The funerary architecture of history has ranged fromTholos tombs of the Mycenaians to the pyramids of the Egyptians to the grander of the Toshima Hall. Monuments and tombs all communicate the values of their societies. The values of a culture can be seen in its built environment. Architecture personifies these values to an extreme. Architecture is the means of creating permanent expression of a societies values. American society has inflicted the grid pattern to its funerary architecture. Cemeteries speak more of urban planning than of the people themselves. Lives become reduced to a parcel of land laid out in rows and columns much like the layout of a subdivision. Due to advances in technology, American culture has been changing. Advances in technology have affected the design of architecture with faster means of communication and a new concept of space to design in. Time has become a commodity. A sense of place is no longer a factor. Permanency is no longer an issue in the built environment when everything is given a life expectancy. A community is no longer defined by geographic locations but expanded by the net. Communication has been reduced to megahertz. Numbers become code, which thus become words Will history change when the most casual conversation can be recorded digitally?

Proposal	Funereal architecture is the reflection of a society combing values. The use of architecture as a social reflection is not the question. Architects will always represent the spirit of the time. It is my goal to create a design that incorporate the use of digital advances in stored media, communication, and cyberspace to create a piece of funerary architecture, and thus communicate and reflect the values of contemporary American society. The building type that I will design to express these issues will be that of a National Digital Archive for the Deceased. The facility will act as both a space for storage of the deceased and preservation of recorded digital information of the person's former life. The proposed location of the site is located near San Francisco in a small city called Colma, California. In addition to building itself, there will be an exploration of a virtual architecture to visit the archive.

Program	The design will integrate the following elements: Cemetery grounds with mausoleums for cremation Facilities to conduct funereal ceremonies, a chapel, mortuary, funeral home, and preparation rooms Preservation of digital-recorded remnants such as, but not limited to, pictures, letters, writings, genealogical information, heath records, and/or holographic representation. Facilities to interact and access the recorded remnants both publicly and privately Administration offices and Parking facilities Reflect the United States concepts and attitude of death Access to the records through a reflection of the design on the Internet in the form of a web-site

Significance	The conceptual idea of combining two completely unrelated topics into an architectural design is fascinating. The ideas of space will be pushed to the limits. Is a place needed to experience shared memories? Does place still hold value when the memories can be accessed by different means? The building itself will be a record of many architectural influences. Concepts such as death, time, and speed and experience will all have great influence on the design. An issue that has always frustrated me about contemporary American culture is that there is not enough respect for the deceased. Death is no longer feared nor respected. We have become immune to the violence and imagery seen in media and entertainment. It is my hope to communicate a respect for the circle of our lives and give meaning to a topic that generally is shunned upon as being morbid. The Romans were to busy watching the lions attacking the Christians in the coliseum to even respond to the invading Visigoths. Will we as a culture get to enthralled with the passiveness of death that we will not value the complexity of life?
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