Everybody dies. That’s a fact. But it does matter how we die and where you end up afterwards. Should we not think again about how buildings respond to the subject of life and death, and how is the spatial design by landscape and architecture responding to this? Hospices are buildings where people will spend their last days and crematorium and cemetery are just places where dead people will go to and where family and friends can mourn. These places have a strong relationship with each other but are always seen separated and located at different places. Can we maybe combine these places to make death closer to life, a place where life and death go hand in hand, a place you go to, to stay forever. How do you move through spaces if you know that these are your last days? How do you move through the rooms when you visit the resident and how do you move through the rooms when you have to say goodbye to your love one? A building where life and death come together. I take you through the different rites that are conceived as support for a common experience, the acceptance of death. The ritual of the life of your last days, the ritual of coming together and the ritual of parting and mourning. All independent routes that cross and meet each other on certain points.
