A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
DeathDeath is believed to be the end of biological life. With life playing its drama all around us, the appearance of deathDeath within the time-line of life suggests that there is, in terms of spatiality, a space of death. This notion leads to a duality of space: the space of the living and the space of death, a space reserved specifically for the deadDead. In addition, next to it there is also is a space of the dead; a dead body as an object still takes up space among the living. As we saw in Chap. 1, the space of the living is what Merleau-Ponty defines in his book ThePhenomenology of PerceptionPhenomenology of Perception; as fundamental. Merlau-Ponty points out that there would be no space for us if we did not have a body (Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The Phenomenology of PerceptionPhenomenology of Perception. p.). The question of the space of deathDeath is a metaphysical enquiry that might been asked by probably every human who has ever lived: is there a space in which the dead in some form or another continue to reside? That is, is there a spatiality in an afterlife? The space of the dead, on the other hand, is a space here among the living: the space the deadDead occupy as a corpse is a space that equally occupies the human mind. It is through architecture that humans try to answer this question; a stone placed on top of a deceased body symbolically tries to overcome this ultimate limitationLimits, limitations of life. These stones, heavy in weight and sometimes hauled from very far distances, are the very first acts of architecture; as a physical manifestation of a symbolic gesture in which the memory of the deadDead is expressed as persisting within the durability of a material that has been around for millions of years. A gesture that is still practised today.
DeathDeath is believed to be the end of biological life. With life playing its drama all around us, the appearance of deathDeath within the time-line of life suggests that there is, in terms of spatiality, a space of death. This notion leads to a duality of space: the space of the living and the space of death, a space reserved specifically for the deadDead. In addition, next to it there is also is a space of the dead; a dead body as an object still takes up space among the living. As we saw in Chap. 1, the space of the living is what Merleau-Ponty defines in his book ThePhenomenology of PerceptionPhenomenology of Perception; as fundamental. Merlau-Ponty points out that there would be no space for us if we did not have a body (Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The Phenomenology of PerceptionPhenomenology of Perception. p.). The question of the space of deathDeath is a metaphysical enquiry that might been asked by probably every human who has ever lived: is there a space in which the dead in some form or another continue to reside? That is, is there a spatiality in an afterlife? The space of the dead, on the other hand, is a space here among the living: the space the deadDead occupy as a corpse is a space that equally occupies the human mind. It is through architecture that humans try to answer this question; a stone placed on top of a deceased body symbolically tries to overcome this ultimate limitationLimits, limitations of life. These stones, heavy in weight and sometimes hauled from very far distances, are the very first acts of architecture; as a physical manifestation of a symbolic gesture in which the memory of the deadDead is expressed as persisting within the durability of a material that has been around for millions of years. A gesture that is still practised today.
Useless Architecture
Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements
van der Linden, Martin (author)
2021-03-13
21 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
| Online Contents | 1996
| British Library Online Contents | 1996
Online Contents | 2011