Absence/Presence

Death has been torn out of the city. We are no longer familiar with acknowledging our mortality, and this needs to be changed. The project proposes a sustainable approach to burial - Promession - in which the body is returned to the landscape. Defined by three routes relating to the three stages of grief, the building stretches from the city to the Harnham Water Meadows, a vital part of Salisbury’s history. Each route takes on a different character for each occasion - the arrangement of the funeral, the ceremony itself, and the committal of the ashes. The project centres around the Honore idea that there is a bond between slowness and memory; that in slowing down the funeral ceremony, a lasting and more poignant and final memory is formed of the deceased.