RAUM FÜR ERINNERUNG DEATH & THE CITY_Furawā Tower 2016
Tokyo Vertical Cemetery_Ideas Competition
More often than not, today's cemeteries are vast emplacements situated some distance from the city core; places of silence far from the urban centres, burial grounds forming unusual and unreal outposts on the outskirts of our towns. At the same time, their exposed location illustrates how society crowds out the cemetery and, with it, death (see Foucault [2005]).
Tokyo's Furawa Tower is a place of collective reminiscence, a mirror of the global society, consisting of individual archives subject to an overall architectonic shape. Throughout history and tradition, memorials were located in exposed places. Its structure is based on an abstract flower, metaphor of life and mortality. People deal with death differently, sometimes in communicative ways. The cemetery as a meeting point for bereaved, a place of silence and contemplation, but also lively, close to the town centre, digitally interlinked. Displaying colourful areas with views of Tokyo, the Tower re-integrates the dead into city life without excluding mourners.
(Heterotopias. The Utopian Body. Frankfurt upon Main, 2005.)