Life In Proximity to Death: Questions of Design

Join us for an evening with Karla Rothstein (Columbia GSAPP) and John Bruce (Parsons School of Design) as they discuss their respective projects on how we may support the dead and the dying. As an architect, Karla Rothstein has been at the forefront of efforts to transform the ways in which we commemorate and place the dead, especially given constraints of space in urban cemeteries and environmental costs of cremation. Through his work as a filmmaker, John Bruce documents the power of human connections with the dying, who are all too often marginalized from the wider currents of everyday social life. Together, their work raises urgent questions about how to understand life in proximity to death—questions of design, which are just as much questions of dignity and care.