Beyond Dying Bodies: The Set of Gravity and Likbodsprojektet

This visual essay explores fragility as a conceptual framework guiding the architectural design process, drawing on informal practices that imagine care scenarios. It focuses on architectural bodies at the end of their life cycle, exploring them as new sites for architecture. The concept of fragility as a circular transition between life and death is explored through two intertwined case studies. The first is Brent Green’s movie “Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then,” which depicts the DIY construction of Leonard Wood’s house meant to heal his terminally ill wife, Mary. The second is Likbodsprojektet by architect Erika Henriksson, which involves a collective conversion of a mortuary room into a wooden contemplation chamber as a practice of care. As the comparison of these cases reveals, the fragility paradigm emerges from scarcity, yet presents an opportunity for reinvention. This controversial process nurtures relationships between bodies and waste landscapes while navigating constraints: being broke in a broken world.