InMArGINE seeks to create a place where life and death convene. A place where you realize that life is worth living. A place not only for paying your last respects but where you can simply wind down and quit the daily routine.

Studying the history of death I came to the conclusion that the place of death is set within a number of tensionalities. Between life and death, urban and rural, public and private. The place of death is found in a space-between, a margin. So, for example, the Müller Pier is designed as a margin where extremes come together. The living, by moving, penetrate the world of the dead. This movement is not found in open space as it would be in the city but in the mass formed by two walls. There, openings ensure contact with the void beyond. Repeating these openings creates a sense of movement, of life. Small towers standing at the end of the pier evoke longing. Upon reaching the towers these are found to house the urns and bones of the dead. The view from there is phenomenal. The emptiness of the expanse of water symbolizes death, its undulating surface continuing as 'frozen moments' in the burial plots. Relief ensues between the masses. The walls offer protection to the private ritual enacted there among the plots. Otherwise there is an endless void, at times close by, at others infinitely distant.

Nor is it just the place, but the programme too that experiences a tensionality between the ritual of burying a loved one and simple leisure. Because life without that person will never be the same, the route of the ritual is continuous and eternally different. It is a gradual transition from outside to inside. Whether you arrive by water or from the city, the route brings you to the waiting room. From there you enter the chapel. Leaving the chapel, the routes of the burial ceremony and the ritual of cremation go their separate ways, reuniting finally in the coffee area which has more the ambience of a living room. Slowly mourners are led back to the city from the world-within-a-world, back to the world. It is an unbroken route that seamlessly stitches together the city and the place of mortality. The building dissolves in the landscape; the distinction between landscape and building is subjective.

Place of education: TU Eindhoven
Specialization: architectuur/architecture
Tutors: Hans Ruyssenaars, Tom Dubbelman & Han Lörzing