Death and the Sublime Landscape
Death and the Sublime Landscape
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Date
2008-05-27
Authors
Mitrocsak, Nandor
Advisor
Noonan, Peter
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Abstract
This thesis explores the sublime experience through architectural and landscape design.
Narrations concerning time, nature, life and death are conveyed through the medium of
architectural promenade. Do these experiences have the power to lift individuals from
the everyday into the transcendental and memorial?
Mount Washington sits atop Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, overseeing the flows of the
Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers. Its physical form and presence has been
evolving over the last 300 million years, a timescale beyond typical human constructs.
Today, its topography enables sweeping views across the city and the river valley
beyond. The temporal and physical scale of Mount Washington renders it a sublime
object, worthy of contemplation. The thesis seeks to engage natural and man-made
features of Mount Washington throughout the site.
Throughout history, cemeteries and other landscapes of the dead have been
extraordinary subjects of sublime experiences. The thesis abstracts elements of
cemeteries and reassembles a choreographed promenade. Using the language of path
and place, this promenade seeks to accommodate and respect rituals of cremation and
the accommodation of the dead in the landscape.