BEAUTY MEMORY ENTROPY

EDUCATION AND PRACTICE

 

Beauty and the Beast: Minimizing entropic grief through the Multisensory

Deathspace Interior

Renee Struthers, University of Manitoba

 

ABSTRACT

Our existential questions are rooted in the biographical history of bodies—their being in and departure from the world.1

Those who study the environments as it appears phenomenologically train themselves to a high level of environmental sensitivity—an ability to “reduce consciousness” or to focus—in order to record their own specific responses. This method of reflective inquiry is rigorous. It utilizes a system of directed intuition that moves attention through culturally scripted ideas about the environment toward more subtle or pure levels of environmental awareness.2

 

The concepts of memory, aesthetic contemplation and death have been intimately tied to the ideas

governing phenomenological discourse since the beginning of recorded history; yet, the 21st century

tendency towards evidence-based design often overshadows the equally important experience-based design approach where the subjectivity of bodily and sensorial experience of interior space take precedence. The inherent successfulness of the design of sacred spaces, including the contemporary deathspace,3 lies in the multisensory environment-person exchange 4 and the flexibility of space to accommodate a wide range of meaningful experiences.

The experiential interior deathspace creates a testing ground for the reduction of disorder in the face of the highly chaotic structure of death and grief. The common experience of displacement and chaos in the process of grief suggests imperativeness in honouring both the embodied and metaphysical dimensions of grief through concepts such as dichotomy, intercorporeality and ineffability, where they are applied to the interior conditions of space. These concepts are explored through an interior design practicum study and design proposal for an urban columbarium. The design portion of the study, ranges from the scale of intimate objects to interior spaces where light, tactile materials, and interior acoustic qualities, might be experienced in a powerful, focused and deeply personal way, all in an attempt in an attempt to acknowledge the gravity of grief and loss,. The ineffable experience of the multisensory deathspace imprints itself on one’s memory providing a tool in escaping the entropic constraints of death. The study explores the phenomenological realm of interior space, providing moments of phenomenological and aesthetic contemplation where, paring down stimuli to a distinct selection, the individual is able to process their surrounds, arguably, more efficiently than in the purely architectural context. Using, as a conceptual framework for discourse, Foucault’s heterotopia, Laura Tanner’s theory of grief as bodily loss and Le Corbusiers ineffable space, the interior deathspace might be imagined as a transformative refuge from the uncertainty experienced through grief. All the while setting the context for rich and meaningful mnemonic experience.

 

1 W.K. Turner, as quoted in Philip A. Mellor and Chris Shilling, "Modernity, Self-Identity and the Sequestration of Death,"

  Sociology 27, no. 3 (August 1993), 428.

2 Cathy J. Ganoe, "Design as Narrative: A Theory of Inhabiting Interior Space," Journal of Interior Design 25, no. 2 (1999),

3 Spaces for death, referred to as deathspaces, for the purposes of this discussion, encompass conventionally recognized spaces associated with death including funeral homes, funeral chapels, cemeteries, columbarium, mausoleums, tombs and the like.

4 Joy Monice Malnar & Frank Vodvarka, Sensory Design, (2004), (Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press),

 

 

BIO

Renee Struthers is a interior designer and maker based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her subtle, minimalist, yet intricate design language stems from an intimate connection to process and focuses heavily on experience-based, and client focused design. Her work ranges from commercial and residential interior design, to intimately scaled furniture, lighting and objects. As a recent graduate from the Master of Interior Design program in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Manitoba, her studies focused on contemporary death spaces and the role of the experiential interior in the grief process. Her work has been featured in multiple gallery exhibits, publications and print including the Globe and Mail Style advisor (Spring 2015),  IDS Toronto (2015) and now occupies a popular international retail store in Winnipeg's Exchange district.