Open Access Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington
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Memento Mori: an architecture of life and death

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posted on 2022-07-14, 21:05 authored by Trocio, Seth

Urban centres around the world are facing immense pressure for change as the population continues to grow and the problem of finding habitable space is becoming increasingly apparent. Constructed in the corners of the urban fabric, new forms of inhabitation are created in the left-over spaces of the city. In these contested sites, the relationships between form, function and meaning are constantly negotiated and boundaries between informal/formal, private/public, sacred/secular have slowly eroded. How do we begin to negotiate how space is used? Not only between wealthy and impoverished, but also for the living and the dead?

As a home for the city’s dead, Manila North Cemetery is one of the oldest and largest cemeteries in the Philippines. As the final resting place for the dead, it is also a sanctuary for the living. The evolving typology of the urban cemetery offers an opportunity to readdress the relationships between death, life and architecture. This thesis argues for an architecture that mitigates the growing problems of habitation for the living while also being sensitive to the needs of the dead. Memory, death and fiction are used as theoretical drivers for investigating the growing spatial dichotomies between the living and the dead.

The vehicle of exploration for this investigation is incremental social housing and its specific design within Manila North Cemetery. It will explore how traditional notions of home is no longer fixed its original meaning and within these new contested sites - home, death and its associated meanings are recontextualised through processes of rituals, memory and time.

History

Copyright Date

2022-07-13

Date of Award

2022-07-13

Publisher

Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington

Rights License

Author Retains Copyright

Degree Discipline

Architecture

Degree Grantor

Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington

Degree Level

Masters

Degree Name

Master of Architecture (Professional)

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Outcome code

120205 Residential construction design

ANZSRC Type Of Activity code

3 Applied research

Victoria University of Wellington Item Type

Awarded Research Masters Thesis

Language

en_NZ

Victoria University of Wellington School

Wellington School of Architecture

Advisors

Abreu e Lima, Daniele