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Culture of Mourning

Part 2 Project 2015
Renata Horova
Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design Prague | Czech republic
The aim of my thesis is to solve the outdated stereotypes in the Czech funeral service. I focused on the transformation of funeral aesthetics, creating an alternative to the traditional cemeteries, secularized crematoriums and funeral halls.

With respect to the principles of environmental transformation, my design is a combination of a park and a cemetery without a cemetery wall. I perceive cemetery as a heterotopy and I emphasize the changes in ambiences. New cemeteries, columbaria, places for farewell, mourning rituals and ceremonies as well as ashes dispersal meadows change their appearance and adopt positive meanings.

Working with the idea of reuniting the rituals of life with the rituals of death back in one place, I took the last ceremony of man back into the landscape and merged it with nature’s cycles. Tombstones are replaced by trees. My ideas are expressed by the transformation of landscape (adding and removing soil and trees). Minimal interventions to the environment contrast with naturally grown woods and terrain.

Renata Horova

Tutor(s)

2015
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