Work by Avani Padhiyar
In the context of this studio, death is understood as a transition from one state of being to the next. Matter does not cease to exist and therefore death is not finite; the impact of life extends beyond the end of its intended function. This concept is understood in environmental science as a “footprint”: the trace that a subject (object, building, person, community) leaves in its absence. Sustainable dying considers this footprint in the moment of transition that follows the end of intended function. The legacy of a life, both in its material and memorial impact, plays a direct role in its afterlife.
As a studio, students consider death at a series of different scales correlating to four different “Phases”, beginning with the Death of an Object, and then moving to the Death of a Neighborhood, the Death of a Street, the Death of a Building, and the Death of a User. The semester culminates in Phase 5, the schematic building design of a Center for Sustainable Dying, an adaptive-reuse of an existing warehouse in Buffalo’s Black Rock Neighborhood into a center that memorializes the life cycle of the neighborhood’s forgotten histories, practices, and/or materials. Projects ranged from Death of Plastic/Immortality (above) to Death of Masonry and Death of Enslavement (below). Student work from this studio was reviewed for SC.5 during the 2024 NAAB Accreditation cycle.
