The future of death and the afterlife <header>
Death, different cultures and religions deal with it differently, and what we are familiar with today has not always been the way it is. Rituals and
spaces of death has changed since pre-independence Singapore, and I believe they will change again in the future. Taking into account land
scarcity and rapid development of technology, the amount of data we are uploading online and how our memories are all preserved in the cloud,
my thesis aims to rethink death and the afterlife in Singapore.
Hereafter is an architecture split into two,
Here – to provide non-denominational facilities and spaces for traditional and spiritual rituals and processes of death to be used by all
After – A digital afterlife, a collection of memory pods where the living visit to relive memories spent with the deceased. It also serves as a symbol for remembrance on a national scale, remembering memories of our country collectively.
Supervisor's comments:
In less than 20 years modern societies have transitioned to an online life. The ubiquity of digital photography and the plethora of cloud-based storage and viewing interfaces means that our lives are now being digitally recorded from start to end. This project redefines the notion of death, the ritual of saying goodbye to our loved ones and, perhaps more importantly, reimagines how these same loved ones are remembered. The project provides a powerful embodiment of the key stages of this process, strikingly represented in distinct elements split between land and sea based architectural interventions.
- Adj. Assoc. Prof. Hans Brouwer