Representing death. Between theatre and ritual in the Spanish funeral parlour

Abstract

Faced with growing discontent towards the funerary architecture of our time - in Spain, the mortuarycrematorium - as a host for the farewell and celebration of death, we wonder in this article, what exactly is wrong with these buildings, and what features of their architecture affect our perception of the funeral rite? The work is based on the sociological conception of the rite as theatre, and the analysis of 325 funeral parlours with crematorium ovens in Spain. We understand different parts of the building as scenes to the ritual -introduction, middle, and end-. In doing so, we detected recurrent features and tried to expose how the play -the celebration of death- and its actors -the mourners- are affected by trivial design choices. With an empathetic approach, the analysis is intended to help those facing the design of a funeral parlor in the future. Although the cemetery has been the subject of scholarly attention, nothing has been said about the mortuarycrematorium in Spain from a design point of view. We believe it is pertinent to study these anonymous and industrial buildings as a first step towards reflecting on their architecture and our relationship with death and its rites.