The Falls

Returning to the Ocean

Summer 2022

#ue5

#rhino

This speculative architectural project, developed in Rhinoceros3D and Unreal Engine 5, examines how humanity might remember and honour the dead 150 years into the. The cemetery, considered non-essential yet sufficiently vital to warrant construction, embodies society's complex relationship with mortality and memory.

The design investigates evolving human behaviours, programs, and systems surrounding death and commemoration, expanding architectural discourse beyond conventional problem-solving to address speculative futures.

Speculative collages

Narrative

After catastrophic climate change triggered global warfare over rising sea levels, humanity retreated to overcrowded mountain city-colonies. The ocean, having claimed millions of lives, became the embodiment of death itself. Traditional burial practices were abandoned for water burials, while advanced technology preserves digital consciousness simulations of the deceased. Bodies decompose in the ocean depths, but souls continue existing in virtual form, offering closure to grieving loved ones in this bleak, post-apocalyptic world.

Speculative collages

Narrative

After catastrophic climate change triggered global warfare over rising sea levels, humanity retreated to overcrowded mountain city-colonies. The ocean, having claimed millions of lives, became the embodiment of death itself. Traditional burial practices were abandoned for water burials, while advanced technology preserves digital consciousness simulations of the deceased. Bodies decompose in the ocean depths, but souls continue existing in virtual form, offering closure to grieving loved ones in this bleak, post-apocalyptic world.

Developed site

Concept diagrams

Funerary proceedings

A visitor lift provides access for the general public to the main courtyard, while a separate service lift brings staff, along with the unprepared dead bodies, down to the morgue.

A central courtyard or concourse level serves as the main point of divergence for the circulation when people arrive at the cemetery. From the courtyard, visitors may choose to visit either the memorial services, or the ceremonial ones.

Memorial services involve the Confluence Room and Archive Creation Room. The Confluence Room is where visitors can interact with a projected holographic simulation of the deceased based on their specific memories and experiences with them when they were still alive (more on this later), and the Archive Creation Room is where these simulated holo-projections are developed and stored. These services are available to returning visitors or to those who just attended a wake or funeral.

Meanwhile, ceremonial services include the wake within the Wake Rooms, and the funerary send-off at The Falls. These rooms are reserved for private ceremonies, only open to family members and friends that are invited to attend.

The staff, aside from accessing the aforementioned spaces, also prepare dead bodies for ceremonies in the morgue, and have access to the reservoir of water used throughout the cemetery, as well as the staff room.

Developed site

Concept diagrams

Funerary proceedings

A visitor lift provides access for the general public to the main courtyard, while a separate service lift brings staff, along with the unprepared dead bodies, down to the morgue.

A central courtyard or concourse level serves as the main point of divergence for the circulation when people arrive at the cemetery. From the courtyard, visitors may choose to visit either the memorial services, or the ceremonial ones.

Memorial services involve the Confluence Room and Archive Creation Room. The Confluence Room is where visitors can interact with a projected holographic simulation of the deceased based on their specific memories and experiences with them when they were still alive (more on this later), and the Archive Creation Room is where these simulated holo-projections are developed and stored. These services are available to returning visitors or to those who just attended a wake or funeral.

Meanwhile, ceremonial services include the wake within the Wake Rooms, and the funerary send-off at The Falls. These rooms are reserved for private ceremonies, only open to family members and friends that are invited to attend.

The staff, aside from accessing the aforementioned spaces, also prepare dead bodies for ceremonies in the morgue, and have access to the reservoir of water used throughout the cemetery, as well as the staff room.

Confluence of deceased and greivers

memorial service

The Confluence Room's memorial service draws inspiration from Aristotle's On Memory and Reminiscence, which describes how memories form through individual impressions, meaning the same event creates different recollections for each person based on their age, experience, and perception.

Before death, individuals create personal avatars through recorded sessions capturing their personality, life experiences, speech patterns, vocabulary, and mannerisms, essentially their self-impression. After death, visitors interact with these avatars, which respond uniquely to each person based on their specific relationship with the deceased. This triggers personalized versions of shared memories, reflecting the different impressions each visitor formed during the deceased's lifetime, allowing for deeply individual acts of remembrance and closure.

Confluence of deceased and greivers

memorial service

The Confluence Room's memorial service draws inspiration from Aristotle's On Memory and Reminiscence, which describes how memories form through individual impressions, meaning the same event creates different recollections for each person based on their age, experience, and perception.

Before death, individuals create personal avatars through recorded sessions capturing their personality, life experiences, speech patterns, vocabulary, and mannerisms, essentially their self-impression. After death, visitors interact with these avatars, which respond uniquely to each person based on their specific relationship with the deceased. This triggers personalized versions of shared memories, reflecting the different impressions each visitor formed during the deceased's lifetime, allowing for deeply individual acts of remembrance and closure.

Sources

Beare, J. I. (2010). On memory and reminiscence Aristotle (ca. 350 b.c.). Annals of Neurosciences, 17(2), 87–91. https://doi.org/10.5214/ans.0972-7531.1017208

Special thanks

EVA CASTRO & DARYL HO: For your invaluable guidance, knowledge imparted and support as studio instructors.

sutd asd core studio 2 - the digital archive: "the proto-cemetery" project brief

This studio will operate ‘against’ hyper-contextualism or specific technicisms of sort, challenging preconceived cultural conditions, the “known” and the “appropriate”, to create experimental prototypes whose specificity don’t arise from the regulative condition of a specific place but from the environmental fictions we will design. We will pursue the “generic”; a building type without a specific (existing) site and time. Our context will be understood as the development of a narrative, where we will craft a “culture”, that is a community – and an architecture. We will design hence fictions that will unfold onto physical worlds, turning into environments, where the projects will unfold from, defining the new types and temporalities of the funerary rituals, activating a certain form of truth -our truth, within it.The building’s temporality will be that of a desired future within a speculative world in 100+ years, one where corpses are no longer kept/stored/mourned in conventional/known ways. Where there may be socio-economic-hygienic and spatial restrictions to the funerary practices we know now.The “time” in which our buildings will be inscribed should be understood not as mere actuality but as an experimental field where questions are prompted;Will we be?...as we are now?
How?
Will we exist?... as we are now?
How?
Will we live?...as we do now?
How?
Will we feel?...as we do now?
How?
Will we remember?...as we do now?and onto where designs could be experimented without the asphyxiating weight of actual parameters. We will embark in the adventure of inventing new configurations, and more specifically, to cater for new building-forms of digital/analogue (co)existence. The design drive will be a program to organize in space and time, in a crafted narrative, a series of interfaces, material or otherwise, between analogue atmospheres and digital environments.

JEREMY YEH

DIGITAL DESIGNER

ABOUT

ARCHIVE

JEREMY YEH

DIGITAL DESIGNER

ABOUT

ARCHIVE