Connective Boundaries - Proposal for a secular funerary ceremony in Torup Beech forest

Sammanfattning: Connective Boundaries is a personal reflection on how a worthy and comforting funeral ceremony can be designed without religious convictions. It begins with the acknowledgment that, today, the tension between the personal and the social experience of death has led to attempts to sanitize, hide and compartmentalize both the mourner and the deceased, alienating both. This project investigates the borders and points of contact between an individual mourner’s personal search for solace after the loss of a loved one and the general public relationship with grief and death at various scales. The project is placed in the public recreational forest in Torup, Skåne, where these relationships are further investigated through a series of spaces for funerary rituals, addressing the need of sacrality and symbolism in a non-religious context. The main focus of the project has been the directed experiences and social interactions in and between these spaces; a Promatorium, a ceremonial building, a public restaurant and a space for memorialization and remembrance. Taken together, Connective Boundaries demonstrates the potential for architecture to transform and integrate the physical and psychological experience of death in a world where such connections have been severed.