Making death visible through architecture
"The transience of that place symbolises the transience of life."
A cone on the pier in Scheveningen. That is the graduation project of Vince van Boxtel, student of the master’s programme in Architecture at ArtEZ Academy of Architecture. He designed a place for people with dementia who no longer wish to live, and for whom no place yet exists.
Architecture as conversation
"As an architect, I want to explore boundaries," says Vince. "I want to examine what can be talked about, what must not be talked about, and what I think is important." For him, architecture is a way to start conversations, about themes we often prefer to avoid.
A cone on the pier
In his design, Vince makes death visible. The cone on the pier is a place to die, without judgement. Around that cone, he designed a small universe: a café for saying goodbye, a house for the pier guard, and a space where visitors hand in their phones. From those phones, a 'book of thoughts' emerges, a life story as a farewell gift.
"This search for who I am, as a person and as a designer, is what the academy has given me."
Autonomy and transience
The idea arose after Vince watched documentaries about people with dementia who no longer wanted to live but were not allowed to decide that for themselves. "I wanted to create a place to talk about self-determination," he says. Scheveningen, with its decaying pier and the boundary between land and sea, became the perfect location for him. "The transience of that place symbolises the transience of life."
A search for self
The project means more to Vince than just a graduation piece. "This search for who I am, as a person and as a designer, is what the academy has given me." Will the cone ever be built? "The chances are probably smaller than zero," he says with a smile. "But still I say: Scheveningen, go ahead and build it."
