Project Statement (Full)

It is incontrovertible that most human dying in the United States is impacted by corporate or other for-profit influence. It follows that mourning and bereavement are then also impacted by these forces. I believe that this restricts and narrows the ways that people process the end of life. Authentic individual and group cultural practices become limited, inaccessible or lost completely. These repercussions can potentially negatively impact critical individual and community catharsis. In developing my project, I dove into the current state of the design of typical inpatient hospice settings in the United States. I also explored the spiritual and religious spaces that accompany these types of healthcare environments. I think that standard inpatient hospice rooms and healthcare facility chapels are representative of what is accessible and available for most people (images below in 'Project Presentation Deck' page 3).

Based on my knowledge of how interior spaces impact humans and human interactions, I would offer that the design of these spaces could limit the way people die and grieve. In further exploration of my project concept, I studied the way various individuals and communities emotionally and physically react to loss. There is no standardized or correct way to process the end of life and my project does not criticize how individuals approach this, how they grieve, or what facilities to which they have access. What my project does do is to consider the negative effects that these corporate and anonymous spaces have on our relationship to the end of life and on our emotional health maintenance as communities.

My project site is located in New York City. My design includes spaces for a small, reimagined, inpatient hospice facility and bereavement community center. I designed a series of adaptable environments that are available for an array of mourning rituals and therapeutic activities as necessary to accommodate the nuances of grief. The space will evoke inclusivity, empathy, peace, and comfort.

Interiors can promote and facilitate emotional and psychological resilience practices. I aim to combat some of the negative and imposed connotations surrounding death in the United States, as the effects these can have on spiritual and emotional maintenance can be limiting and devastating. Through these spaces that encourage and support personal and honest reflection we could perhaps help recreate or reaffirm often neglected or forgotten methods of processing grief.

My goal is to provide an example of settings that are not constrained by profit motives or other peoples religions. Instead I offer an example of spaces that allow and empower people to process the end of life in authentic, healthy, inclusive and personalized ways. A space like this could be morphed into an environment based on a community’s needs and wishes. Our current outdated spaces that facilitate such profound experiences while also neglecting their importance can serve to reinforce death as something associated with guilt, evasion, and discomfort. I want to use my spatial intervention as a way to showcase how the built environment can help to sustainably maintain a healthy and authentic human relationship to the natural process of life ending. This can be done by re-imagining the physical environment that helps humans process and carry out the realities of dying, death, and bereavement.