Architecture Studio 2: the digital archive
Teaching Team: Eva Castro (Faculty) | Daryl (TA) | Jacob (VR/AR) | Young Bin (VR/AR)
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The 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.
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With a 'site-less' condition and the temporal context being far flung into the future, the studio requires the construction of a fictional site and speculative narrative, addressing the universal urgencies of spatial limitation, data storage and memory preservation.
World Building: the Proto-Cemetery
The project postulates Death and Rituals in a speculative future, where death is welcomed as an advancement of civilization.
"What will you miss after you die? The future holds so much possibility that it overwhelms us with regret. The completion
of the Zeitpyramid in the 3183 AD, the recovery of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in 22000, and the collision of our galaxy
with Andromeda in 2.5 million years, are events far flung into the future beyond the reach of our brief existence. The fear
is not that of death, but of regret.
In the year 30XX, progression of humanity has plateaued. While the world no longer suffers from food shortages or poverty,
technology and culture has reached a stagnation. Many start to ponder and question the reason for their existence.
Maybe it was by pure chance or through the will of the unknown, a collective of thinkers came to the same conclusion;
our existence merely serves as a vessel for the universe to grow, and now it is time to assimilate and return to the singularity.
The collective inspired others and soon grew into a congregation. The followers believed that the singularity is an entity
beyond humanity, yet do not worship it. Instead, they wrote tenets for subsequent followers; The Five Forms of Assimilation.
The followers document their lives through a digital journal, capable of recording every sensation, thought and emotion.
The knowledge and wisdom of humanity will then be returned upon death to bring us closer towards the Singularity."
World Building: Death and Rituals
Assimilation with Society
The usable organs of the deceased are first donated to the ill, regardless of their belief. This follows the tenet to live a
fruitful and experiential life, and if one’s life can be prolonged, then it shall be.
Assimilation with the Congregation
The body will be processed into wafers to be consumed during communion for the departed member. The act reinforces
the idea of assimilation, with every departed always existing as part of the living, until the very last person.
Assimilation with the Cemetery
The remains will be added into concrete dolosse to become part of the cemetery’s infrastructure, prolonging the life of
the cliff until the end of time.
Assimilation with the Mind
The memory of the departed will be incorporated into the memory of the congregation. To prevent a mental overload, the
congregation will be injected a hallucinogen to induce a trance-like state, allowing the memories to merge.
Assimilation with the Singularity
The memories of the departed will be copied into the supercomputer. With every death, the assimilation of memories furthers,
until the last human with the memories of humanity.
World Building: Fictional Cliff
The given site typology for the Proto-Cemetery is the cliff. The fictional site is sculpted and molded with references to the Cliffs of Moher, the Green Bridge of Wales and Bear Island in Svalbard. The cliff is designed to have a peak that points towards and beyond the horizon, signifying the end of life and the immaterial plane that lies beyond. A spherical cave is carved out of the cliff to create monumental space, invoking a sense of awe when one enter the cemetery.
Program, Circulation & Diagram
The ritual derived from the narrative requires the corpse to be disintegrated for the deceased to achieve immateriality from of the physical world. Different components of the corpse will be used in the rituals of assimilation, conveying the idea that the deceased will still live on within us, so will their wisdom. A systematic approach is taken to understand how the corpse is treated, which influences the programs of the cemetery. Data collected from the deceased is stored within the 'Singularity', a digital archive of humanity. Genetic data can be used to predict health issues and illnesses while the cumulative knowledge will answer questions to advance civilization.
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The programs are arranged in accordance to the funerary rites developed in the narrative. The family and friends of the deceased will first enter the Communion Hall for the assimilation with the congregation, using mixed reality to disorient and prepare the mental state of the congregation. The passage circumambulates around the cave, weaving in and out of the cliff and putting the congregation into a trance-like state. The ritual ends in the Incorporation Chamber, where a hypersensory recreation of the deceased memory is experienced by the congregation to transfer the memory and skill of the deceased into the living, completing the assimilation with the mind.
Form Exploration
A computational design approach is taken to study the spatial relationship of the organic cliff face and the perfect spherical cave. The generated field lines are abstracted to create the circulation and form of the cemetery spaces. The top view suggests how the passage could mediate between the cliff face and cave as it moves from the communion hall into the "Singularity", distorting the path as it moves closer to the cave.
Isometric View Top View Side View
Virtual Reality
The studio operated on the idea of hyperreality, a concept proposed by Jean Baudrillard in his work 'Simulacra and Simulation', where the real and fiction are blended seamlessly that no distinction can be found. The project proposes the use of Extended Reality to create an immersive experience as part of the funerary ritual. By blending the real and unreal, the congregation loses touch on reality and enters a trance state for the memory inheritance in the incorporation chamber. The concept of memory was abstracted from Aristotle's work 'On Memory', which suggests that the act of remember is the recreation of a memory. If a true replica of a memory can be made and experienced by another, wouldn't that mean that the memory is transferred?
Communion Hall
Singularity
Extended Reality is mainly applied to the Communion Hall and the Cave, where the assimilation with the congregation and mind occurs respectively. The Communion Hall uses light to change the color of the interior, matching the color of the sky. By making minute phase shifts in the interior lighting, the occupants slowly lose their sense of time. The Singularity is nested within the spherical cave, creating a monumental view of the digital archive of humanity.
The experiences created in Unreal Engine 4 uses the motif of disintegration, with the idea that after death, the deceased will disintegrate into its fundamental state, assimilating into the singularity. The vast space is used to create an overwhelming sense of awe, suggesting the inevitability of death and how we are nothing but space dust trying to find its way back to the stars.