Project Intentions

Through a reinterpretation of hermeneutical analysis techniques for ritualarchitecture,as initially proposed by Lindsey Jones (2000:50), my dissertation seeks to explorea novel means of creating meaningful ritual spaces, using Jones’s “stages of play” as a springboard from which to create new space rather than decipher existing spaces. With a focus on spaces associated with death, cremation and commemoration, the spheres of the pragmatic, ritual and heritage approaches to design all culminate to form a rich milieu from which to interpret new potential means of public interaction through detailed analysis of ritual stages, objects and actors and how these all lead to spaces.

Through an application of the above-mentioned hermeneutical principles, objects and actors involved in the two greater spheres of engagement as identified through site analysis (heritage tourists and ritual mourners) are placed within cyclical systems that converge over key points.These points have been identified as ritual steps in the “play of interaction” that occurs between actor and space (facilitated by key objects).

 Actors involved in these rituals associated with cremation and commemoration have been observed to engage with eight distinct stages of ritual, all of which could benefit from enhanced responses to their facilitation on the Braamfontein Crematorium site. Those actors involved in the secondary sphere of heritage tourism engage in wholly alternate associative rituals when entering a space curated for heritage experience purely for its own sake.