Precedents

Describe theory, concepts, and research you have performed. Describe the prior work, ideas and projects that influenced your design. What work informed this idea.

One thing that we did for this project was to all do a set of case studies, which looked at previous work. Some of these case study "signals" inspired our work- if not by design, by giving us a view of the world's issues with and thoughts on dying and remembrance. I would like to highlight two that inspired specific parts of our final design.

The first case study I would like to reference is the one about how cemeteries are running out of space.  According to Nicole Hanson, a cultural planner who specializes in cemetery urbanism, “We are going to be out of space in five to ten years." This inspired us to look beyond the person's physical body when remembering them or viewing their memorial- we as a society cannot afford to keep burying people.  Additionally, this case study inspired us to plan to build a memorial in an already existing space, so as to minimize the space it takes up as there is already not enough room for the dead.

The last study I would like to reference is the one about internet privacy and google personal information being removed in Europe. We thought this was important to our memorial idea because it reminded us to allow people to take control over their own image and choose how public it is, curate their own content, and choose exactly who they want to have access to their data if they want a semi private or private data memorial.