Deathscrapers summons the architecture that surrounds the dearly departed. Seeking alternately to soften death’s physical and emotional toll or cultivate death’s instrumental potential, the stories of Deathscrapers span all scales of spaces for the dead and the bereaved to examine how living people engage with dead bodies, expired buildings, and comatose cities. While death may be a solemn subject and discussing it openly is often taboo in American culture, this issue of SOILED offers an optimistic and human attitude toward understanding how spatial and architectural issues actively participate in death culture.
IN THIS ISSUE: Zack Saunders re-appropriates dead bodies as surrogate wombs for human gestation. Jessica Charlesworth crafts curious memento mori objects to engage human mourning and loss. Office S&M constructs totemic memorials for our online identities. Irena Gajic draws nine speculative rooms to die in. David Weissman & Dan Weissman converse about the design and medical ramifications of spaces for palliative care. Kyle Branchesi & Shane Reiner-Roth reconsider unrealized, aborted, and condemned buildings as sites to cultivate architectural character. Galo Cañizares panders stills from an architectural snuff film, recording the material demise of three architectural projects. Courtney Coffman translates the psychology of self-destructive desire into architectural terms. Ryan Flener & Samuel Mortimer call upon architects and city planners to set fire to our existing cities. Manon Mollard projects a parallel world of the dead alongside the familiar city of the living.
