An approach to the sublime of death

Abstract

Death is an unknown and it is final. This makes it sublime. The sublime as an aesthetic category is experienced emotionally as the moral certitude of having embraced the absolute. In that sense, the nervous system is capable of the exact same physiological responses in life. It is these responses to the sublime that I wish to explore as the basis for an architectural iconology with the hope that the iconography and the design will create an acute aesthetic response in an intelligent viewer. My aim has not been so much to design a cemetery, and much less a crematorium. I wanted to go beyond the banality of physical function and design an environment that would invite visitors to ponder on issues of death and life. Without death, no life is possible, and yet, if we consider our planet in a cosmic sense, the birth or the death of a human being on this speck of dust is irrelevant. However, since biblical times, we humans have confused earth with the cosmos and the end of things equivalent to the destruction of the planet. In that sense, life tends to deny death. My task then has been to create an environment that would foster thoughts of remembrance, and through remembrance, bring back to life, as it were, someone we have loved. I like the idea of people pondering uplifting thoughts there on a bright summer day and also being crushed by the awesome sublimity of contemplating the sea at the end of a dark walk on a dreary snowy winter day with razor-sharp snow burning their faces in a high wind.

(cont.) As humans, death is a destination we all share, and there exists in architecture a special place devoted to the understanding and contemplation of this condition. These places are constructed and conceived for both the living and the dead. They are very public and yet intimately private and personal. They bridge the divide of existence, and become sacred spaces because they touch on the sublime of the absolute, but paradoxically, remind us as well of the fragility of life.