Open Collections

Yuan, Rémi Landry

How can interactions with the natural world amplify our connection to grief and create pathways for healing? Body and Soul is framed through the life of the park, fueled by nutrients from the remains of bodies that have been turned to compost, and the experience of its visitors. It aims to tackle the complicated questions and feelings around grief, and how one can begin to build a better relationship to that grief. The process of engaging with one’s grief, through sensory experiences in natural landscapes, helps us connect and grow stronger relationships to our environment, fostering it and becoming stewards. These spaces can become healing - a separation from urban development to allow ourselves to feel and be true. Here, the architecture is responsive to the natural elements and changing climates around it, developing over time, and acting as secondary to the foliage and landscape. The park engages the mind, the body, and the soul. It engages the senses to connect us to departed souls, the landscape, and ultimately ourselves. Human composting serves as the anchor that grounds us to the natural world, reconnecting to the elements we are made up of, through grieving, care, and thoughtfulness.

Greater Vancouver (B.C.)

Text

University of British Columbia. ARCH 549

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0442332

Applied Science, Faculty of; Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA), School of

Unreviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/