Open remembrance

Sammanfattning

Grief is a universal experience, yet the spaces associated with it are often separated fromeveryday life. This thesis approaches grief as a spatial question, investigating whetherarchitecture can create places that allow both comfort and open forms of remembrance.It begins from the observation that grief is deeply individual, yet influenced by theenvironments in which loss is experienced, remembered, and shared.Since grief should not be defined or directed by architecture, the project explores howspatial design can instead create conditions that support different ways of grieving— through opportunities for reflection, conversation, retreat, and shared presence.The work combines theoretical research, case study analysis, site visits, and dialoguewith a grief support group in Berlin, grounding the project in lived experiences andspatial observations. Insights from grief theory and reference projects are translatedinto architectural strategies related to atmosphere, spatial organization, thresholds,materiality, and orientation.The design proposal is located at the entrance of Old St. Matthäus Cemetery. It transformsand extends an existing café building into a grief support center that remains spatiallyconnected yet programmatically distinct. Rather than merging both functions, the projectmaintains their independence, the café continues as an everyday social space, whilethe grief center provides a more protected environment for counseling, group activities,retreat, and remembrance. Materiality and construction are understood as integral tothe architectural concept, shaping atmosphere, sensory perception, and the emotionalexperience of space.A central theme of the thesis lies in the tension between individual experience andarchitectural generalization. While grief is highly personal, architecture necessarilyoperates through shared spatial conditions rather than individual solutions. The projecttherefore investigates how architecture can remain open and adaptable withoutprescribing specific forms of grieving. In this sense, the thesis argues that architecturecannot resolve grief, but can support it by creating spatial frameworks in which comfort,remembrance, retreat, and everyday life can coexist.