Abstract

Loss of human life has significant impact to those left behind. To the living, facing death is to reflect on one’s own impermanence. Grief, an intensely powerful emotion, can be debilitating and the process exhausting—and will at some point affect us all. Architecture and spaces that transmute grieving behaviors and rituals play a fundamental role—core to societal spiritual and physical behaviors and responses to loss. Accordingly, research undertakes literature review in the field, exploring international liminal architecture examples to determine attributes and qualities of landscape, infrastructure, and integrability to existing physical and social fabrics. Drawing from urban population intensification trends (global migration to urban centers), we undertake demographic, geo-spatial, social, and infrastructure analysis to determine Perth, the capital city of Western Australia, as an appropriate site for context-specific value-add bereavement architecture. Providing a strategic overview of considerations that informs bereavement, this research finds that in the case study (Perth), facilities are unlikely to meet future demand based on current and predicted population growth. Moreover, we argue that the location of such facilities has not expanded in parallel with urban morphology and sprawl—now stretching an area some 8.9 times the area of all of Singapore. Accordingly, through site analysis, we propose a suitable bereavement setting for Joondalup, a municipality in the Perth metropolitan area, as a case study that offers potential for scalability to similar western contexts. From this, practitioners in architecture will be better positioned to guide early development phases and engage with stakeholder processes surrounding the themes of this research. Moreover, the research contributes to the formulation of spaces and landscapes that nurture acceptance of grieving behaviors. The article proactively re-engages a healthy and discourse and association of life with death through bereavement infrastructure and its human occupation as the critical element. Lastly, the study contributes to liminal planning and architecture—advocating for spatial qualities that positively contribute to physical well-being and mental health.