Beyond the Will

Love this idea and that students are thinking this way about death.

A student design project from Madrid asks a question that might make some folks very uncomfortable:
What if deathcare infrastructure wasn't hidden away from everyday life?

"Hot to Go" reimagines Madrid's largest cemetery as a living public space where cremation heat is captured and reused to support remembrance gardens, edible landscapes, digital memorial archives, and even a heated public pool.

Before you start picturing people cannonballing into "cremation pool water," it's worth noting that the project is only speculative. But the idea behind it touches on an important question: why do we work so hard to separate the spaces of death from the spaces of life?

For many cultures the dead have remained part of daily community life. Today, standard deathcare in the West often pushes death to the edges of our comunities, and in result, our conversations.

What if it was common for cemeteries to be not just places of remembrance, but also of gathering, connection, and community? Can we begin to reimagine the infrastructure of death to be designed to benefit both the living and the dead?

Whether you find the idea inspiring, unsettling, or somewhere in between, we love projects like this because they challenge us to rethink what a cemetery can be.

Hot to Go was designed for a Bachelor In Design course– Design Studio III by Ariadna Fernández Yenes, Estrella García Escribano, Marion Isabelle Agathe Vincey and Nilsu Ozdikicioglu.

was on 3 May. , and have been entering including risking their lives in , and the . Their reporting has changed governments, provided the evidence for and and supercharged movements.

According to journalists are civilians and should be protected. Now something is going horribly wrong. These are some statistics on journalists killed in wars:
✚ WWI – 79 (4 years)
✚ WWII – 69 (6 years)
✚ Vietnam war – 71 (20 years)
✚ Nakba/Israeli occupation – no systematic recording (2 years)
✚ Israel-Gaza war – between 234-300 (2 years, 9 months ongoing)

a journalist for was on journalist killed whilst reporting in . This is the deadliest conflict for journalists since global records began.

The from the Heart was an extraordinary act of generosity from peoples across the country. It asked for three simple and fair things: , and .

The lies and misinformation that surrounded the were deeply harmful. While the national outcome cannot be undone, we can always choose to act with , and .

None of us has to do everything — but each of us can do something.
This is something. https://www.togetherfortreaty.org.au/about

is a strikingly beautiful place – peaceful, surrounded by bushland, and, by Australian standards, genuinely old. Established in 1852, its first recorded took place the following year.

Despite Victorian law guaranteeing that of bodies is “in perpetuity,” graves here have been dug up and reused since the late 1800s. This continued as recently as 2016, even after multiple warnings to stop the practice.

Today, piles of soil containing – estimated to represent well over 3,000 people – sit at the back of the cemetery. The scale of this is unprecedented, and addressing it will require extensive and years of work to rectify.

# historicsite

When approximately 2.75 billion passengers flew every year on commercial airlines there was a small sample study of . These were studied and categorised by type and outcome.

Based on the data out of an estimated 744 million there were 16 million per every one-million passengers. Or to put it another way, for every 604 flights there was one .

The most common issues were brief -headedness and impaired vision sometimes resulting in temporary loss of , followed by and or . Moreover – unlike many places you might be are well prepared to manage and handle .

Being with a loved one at their can be a profoundly moving and important experience. However, it's important not to expect that this will happen, nor that it will be a simple and gratifying experience - even if their death is expected.

There are many reasons why it may not be easy, possible or provide a straightforward and experience enabling . It may be that the is still sudden or you can't get there in time. Or that in the 5 minutes you take a necessary break from your is the moment they take their .

It could also be that their occurs during active or due to a that requires isolation. Something we are familiar with due to the initial stages of the pandemic.

There are around 3,000 ***des per year in Australia. Prevention for this is very difficult as those at risk rarely disclose their thoughts and feelings to others.

At a population level, there are factors that increase the risk, these include:
- a prior ***de - regardless of how long ago this occurred
- having lost someone to su***de increases risk
- Aboriginal people have ***derates around twice the overall rates, with higher risks for affected children.

Compounding this are the limited access to services in rural and remote communities, and to support that is .

***de ***deriskfactors

Thanks to the , Australia and New Zealand now have specific for all forms of covering injury to recovery.

Currently about half of the people with concussion don't receive the care they need. GPs and medical staff often lacked confidence in managing recovery. Now both countries' healthcare systems will implement the initiative.

This means and mild treatment can be evidence-based and consistent.

,

wrote that his immigrant mother’s life was constrained and lacked agency. She also lived with the of the of her first-born child.

Due to her migration to Australia, her situation upon ageing was also contrary to her expectations and wishes. Older Greeks would expect to be living with their extended family, not going to a nursing home.

Despite these disappointments and her slide into , and then , he was able to be with her when she died. She took her last breath and looked directly at him as she died. He describes her not dying alone as ‘one precious gift of a moment’.