De belichaming van troost: het ontsluiten van de interactie tussen rouw, tekenen en place(making).

While the approach to the design of funerary architecture in our secularising Western society has remained largely unchanged for the past 200 years, bereavement studies are observing how contemporary memorial practices are moving away from the public domain towards the everyday and private environments of the bereaved. To help close the growing divide between these built and sociocultural landscapes of mourning, this research addresses the following research question: How can the discipline of architecture contribute to an innovative approach to the design of funerary architecture that resonates with contemporary personalised memorial practices? To answer this question, the researcher set out to critically examine the hypothesis that architectural design can be implemented to improve the mental well-being of someone in mourning. As this coincided with a series of blind spots in the existing scientific literature, a constructivist grounded theory approach was adopted instead, meaning that the findings are grounded in the lived experience of people who have experienced loss themselves and were co-constructed by the researcher and the participants during their various interactions throughout the research. Data collection involved interviews, participant observation, and questionnaires, combined with the study and creation of existing or new (design) artefacts. More specifically, to question and expand the insights gained from the researcher's personal experience with designing a hypothetical renovation of her childhood home in response to the passing of her father, the first step of the research involved a search for similar cases. Based on their comparative study, design studio 'An()other Goodbye' was set up the following year, inviting the participating architecture students to design a memorial space in response to a personal loss. The findings of this studio were then used to develop a workshop series for people without a background in architecture. To conclude the research, the continued collaboration with one of the workshop participants enabled a further exploration of the possibilities of co-designing a memorial space together with a client. The study took place in the geographical context of Flanders (Belgium), which is representative of the broader context of Western Europe. Firstly, this approach revealed that the participants' involvement in the (co-)creation of a personalised memorial space (or better place) indeed improved their mental well-being. Translating emotion into matter turned out to be the key to understanding why this therapeutic effect had occurred because, in this embodied form, it became possible for the participants to perceive, control and share their intangible experiences of loss. In other words, the research made it possible to gain a better understanding of the elusive concept of consolation. Secondly, to unlock this therapeutic potential of architectural design both for people with and without a background in architecture, the findings include an approach for (co-)designing (self-)care, meaning one that can inspire architects to design a memorial place for themselves or to co-design one with a bereaved client. The findings also show that to develop their spatial narratives the participants drew on a language of spatial metaphors which emerged from their interaction with various (and sometimes unconventional) visual media for spatial representation. As such, a topic list was compiled which may be further developed for applications aimed at stimulating one's imaginative perception of our material environment. Thirdly, the findings suggest that the participants' designs did not have to be built to generate the observed well-being benefits. Hence, instead of resulting in a new approach to the design of funerary architecture, the research has revealed that the creation of personalised memorial places can act as a memorial practice in itself. As such, the findings initiate a re-evaluation of paper architecture and shift the focus of the discipline from constructing space to generating well-being through the design process that precedes this. Fourth, even though this involved a PhD in Architecture, the research uncovered a new interdisciplinary field between the disciplines of architecture and art therapy full of possibilities for further exploration. By contextualising the findings within closely related fields such as attachment theory, bereavement studies, art therapy, psychoanalysis and co-design, the research also revealed new perspectives to use spatial imagination as a practice for transforming bonds, meaning-making, self-discovery and welldoing. Lastly, on a methodological level, the research demonstrates the indispensable role of artefacts within architectural research and the challenges and benefits of the researcher's involvement in the project as a teacher, facilitator, designer and daughter who lost her father.