Con grande onore annunciamo che Boschi Vivi ha ispirato ben due Tesi di Laurea Magistrale!
- La prima, di Simone Marchetti, Sofia Paoli e Beatrice Rogantini (con il Prof. Arch. Stefano Boeri e sotto la supervisione di Azzurra Muzzonigro, Livia Shamir e Paola Sturla), è una tesi di architettura (Politecnico di Milano) che propone un progetto ispirato a Boschi Vivi e che vuole dare una risposta al futuro dei cimiteri, riportando il tema della morte nella dimensione quotidiana.
- La seconda, di Silvia Peretti (con il Prof. Luca Visconti), è stata discussa a Parigi – ESCP Europe – Master in management e tratta degli eco-friendly burial, pratiche ecologiche di commemorazione che stanno emergendo in varie parti del mondo e che in qualche modo simboleggiano un cambiamento trasversale nella mentalità delle persone, che sentono sempre più l’esigenza di ricongiungersi alla Natura, anche nel lutto.
Siamo davvero orgogliosi di aver entusiasmato, ispirato e alimentato questi giovani talenti.
Cogliamo l’occasione per ringraziare Silvia, Beatrice, Sofia e Simone, augurando loro il meglio, per la professione e per la vita.
Di seguito riportiamo gli abstract delle tesi.
Beatrice, Simone e Sofia: Last landscape
“This thesis has the aim to analyse and attempt to give an answer to the future of cemeteries, where places related with death become part of the lives of the living. Cemetery can become part of a sustainable community, used on a daily basis as a public green space rich of biodiversity while still serving the needs of those in mourning: a place of spirituality for all. Our intervention aims to give a design response to the contemporary need for places for spirituality.
Our goal is to design a cemetery that adopt nature and plants as universal symbols of rebirth and remembrance, in which everyone can feel at ease, beyond religions and cults. People should not treat death as an unpleasant event that must be dealt with as quickly and unobtrusively as possible anymore: death can once again be an important moment of reflection in everyone’s life. This project aims through the landscape and the architectural space to help people to regain possession of the “mourning time” helping in the healing process to overcome grief and providing an answer to the need of introspection spaces within the city.
The cemetery is located in the area of the Farini Railway yard Area, 460,000 sq. m., in a fast growing area northwest of Milan city centre. We are dealing with a new situation for the city and with the availability of very large spaces: the dismantling of seven railway yards and the need to reconvert these areas. We set ourselves within the project concept by Prof. Arch. Stefano Boeri, who proposes to place the volumes on a perimeter surface occupying 10% of the available area. Our project deals with that 90% of open and public space at the railway yard.
The choice of the area was the result of three main factors: its centrality, a key feature for the good performance of our intervention that aims to be a place for the living as well as to bring back in the city the theme of death; Its vast area, Farini Railway yard is in fact one of the most not yet built spaces within the city of Milan; and the proximity to the most representative cemetery in the city, the Monumental Cemetery”.
Silvia: Eco-friendly burials
“In this thesis, eco-friendly burials and the issues related to the developments of new green alternatives and to the marketing of death-related products are investigated, aiming at providing some solutions for the detected outcomes. In order to create the right framework, the changing concept of death is examined from a historical and sociological perspective through the centuries, from the Middle Ages to this day, threaten by international terrorism.
Then, an overview of the modern sociological processes influencing the meaning of burials and the major ecological problems related to the traditional disposal methods — burial and cremation — is introduced, followed by the outline of four eco-friendly alternatives: natural burials, freeze-drying, bio-cremation and the Infinity Burial Suit, which involves the use of mushrooms. The data gathered through semi-structured interviews with two key informants of the industry and a questionnaire are analyzed in order to delineate, when dealing with green disposal options, the major issues, which turned out to be of legal, economic, cultural and promotional nature.
Death is still a taboo in Western society, hence the promotion of death-related products and services is not easy. It emerged clearly from the findings a previously unexpressed desire of people for new burial disposals that might enable them to reconnect with Nature. The final suggestion is not to lose sight of the means through which convey the innovation of ecofriendly burials. Dealing with such a delicate topic, the face-to-face approach is critical, but the first thing to do is to create enough resonance in order to let people know about the new available options, possibly exploiting the endless possibilities offered by the Internet.
Storytelling could be the perfect means to join the need for human contact and emotional ties and the need for a broader diffusion of the subject”.
(image by Last landscape project)