A summary of my presentation to tutors at KNUA for the first time:
My narrative centred on the repercussions from the increase in size of urban dwelling. As areas of habitation become larger the placement of cemetery at edge of community, becomes ever further from anywhere people actually live. This pushes a community's connection with its past, with its archive of past states, further from the day to day. In turn this produces a negative cycle, degrading a communities connection to itself. Family groups reduce in size but increase in intensity - reducing the natural support network but increasing the need for them. The bereaved are left adrift. Death is industrialised and commercialised.
6 Feet Up is an attempt to address these issues. By using new technology that is more agreeable to an urban environment, perhaps appropriately sized facilities can be attached to appropriately sized communities - within the city. These would be placed on the boundaries of contemporary life - the mall, the subway station or the office. Importantly these are not areas of active habitation, but places where city dwellers spend most of their daily lives.
In addition, it is essential to draw from Korea for the method of implementation of typology, placement, and programme. Without this the project could only fail, as an ignorant prescriptive solution.
Tutors asked what functions would the project include. In Korea currently these functions are spread out amongst hospital, crematorium and burial/memorial ground. It would be essential to examine all to find exactly what part they play.
Whatever the older generations attitude may be, and it may be unforgiving to the proposal, there may be differences in the young generation. In other cultures there is a generation gap - in Korea, it is a chasm.
I should make an in depth analysis of the proposed typology, by looking at vertical graveyards in Hong Kong, Japan and in South America. It would be a spatial exercise as though the task seems clear, the site would be very important - both in response to Korean culture and to the legal regulations on the subject.
Finally would people really accept being reminded of death all the time, having it so close by? Perhaps there is a reason that these sites have been pushed to the edge. If I do want to push for an inner urban solution, I would have to be convincing.
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