No Time For Death?
Can design aid in overcoming bereavement?


Perhaps yes, if it can provide subtle reminders that you must: Take care of yourself.

Losing a loved one is inevitably devastating and often to a degree that survivors have statistical tendencies towards self-destruction during bereavement. The aim of this work is to investigate the process of bereavement and how sensitive design could be employed towards aiding mourners in locating healthy personal outlets for grief while stimulating considerations of a bright future as opposed to a fading loss.

How to focus on a healthy future during a mourning period, which is necessarily nostalgic? When the center of attention is a death, how could we aid a loved ones’ survivors in concentrating on life?

This topic will be approached from a variety of interpretations, focusing on contradictions, current trends and how time is or could be allocated to deal with death.

Another specific investigation will be directed at cases of loss with a pre-mourning period. This can be illustrated by considering people who spend the majority of their remaining weeks (months, years) struggling against death perhaps living their lives in the confines of a hospital or hospice. Loved ones realize the person will die. They might witness elements of a person’s life perishing one after the other. They have time to deal with this. What can be learned from this position? How might we prepare for loss due to death and more importantly, why does all pragmatism and prerequisite knowledge fail to influence our emotional response when the death becomes reality?

What don't we make time for today that we used to make time for?


Time and Bereavement
Ritual and Bereavement
Object and Bereavement