Detail from drawing Eun-hae Kwon, Gate of Anger (2015)
Tot Zover
Best Of Class 1. Death and Architecture
Funeral culture is on the move, but does that also apply to the associated architecture? Museum Tot Zover shows a number of innovative architectural concepts that take a fresh look at our approach to death in a spatial context. Newly graduated architects and designers from various study programs are pushing boundaries and placing hospices, crematoriums and cemeteries at the heart of society.
With Best of Class, Museum Tot Zover offers a stage to young talent, to students in the fields of art, design, architecture and communication. We intend to have Best of Class return annually with a changing theme. It is a special opportunity for recently graduated designers to show their work in a museum setting. It is interesting for Tot Zover to see which creative solutions and possibilities there are within the funeral culture. What view of death do new generations have?
The first Best Of Class contains graduation projects of Michael van Bergen (Academy of Architecture Amsterdam, 2016), Eun-hae Kwon (Design Academy Eindhoven, 2015), Bart van der Salm (Academy of Architecture Amsterdam, 2015) and Christianne Schets (Rotterdam Academy of Architecture, 2015).
New life for death
Michael van Bergen (1975) graduated cum laude from the Master of Architecture program at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture in early 2016. His graduation project was New Life Before Death. He previously studied interior architecture at AKV St. Joost Breda and worked as an interior architect. Van Bergen attaches great importance to emotion and meaning in his design practice. We banish death from our thoughts, from our daily lives and from our city, that is why he designed a building where life and death come together again, intended for a place in the center of Amsterdam on the Marnixplantsoen. It will be a collective place, integrated into our society.
Gates of Mourning
Eunhae Kwon (1987) is a South Korean designer. She followed the Contextual Design Master at the Design Academy Eindhoven and graduated in 2015. Kwon has a background in spatial design and sees contextual creativity as the core of her work. Between 2006 and 2011, she studied Industrial Design and Fine Arts at Seoul National University. She is interested in assigning value, content and interaction to design. Social and cultural values are always related to this. Gates of Mourning is a design for a cemetery in which there is room for mourning, the design is a response to current Dutch society, which offers little help to mourners.
Earthing
Bart van der Salm (1983) graduated cum laude in 2014 from the Master of Architecture program at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture. He was nominated for the Archiprix 2015 with his graduation project Earthing, a design for a hospice (Tussenthuis) in the city center of Zwolle. Special about the Tussenthuis is the possibility to stay there with a partner or the whole family. The term Tussenthuis symbolizes the moment between this life and the next world.
De Laatste Wandeling
Christianne Schets (1985) is een ambitieuze en gemotiveerde architect met veel gevoel voor ruimte, waarbij de beleving een belangrijke rol speelt. Het ontwerpen door middel van maquette kenmerkt haar werkwijze en ze zet dit het liefste in om te onderzoeken, ontdekken en presenteren. Deze ontwerpwijze heeft ze krachtig ingezet bij haar afstudeerproject aan de Rotterdamse Academie van Bouwkunst, wat resulteerde in een Archiprix-nominatie. De laatste wandeling is het ontwerp voor een crematorium op de begraafplaats van Orthen. Het ontwerp is een wandeling waarbij architectuur en landschap in elkaar overgaan en elkaar versterken.