“We Must Allow Buildings to Die.” The Exhibition of Death for New Architectures of Life

In the 1960s, inquiries into human existence and mortality captivated architects and artists worldwide. Among them, Hans Hollein explored the origin and destiny of human beings and architecture through two exhibitions dedicated to the themes of life and death. This article demonstrates Hollein’s endeavors to engage with human and non-human final moments, transforming exhibitions, museums, and architecture into media for staging the intertwined cycle of life and death. It highlights Hollein’s view of death as an inevitable, but not final, stage of life: buildings left in ruins or memories of constructions now lost can be reactivated to produce new forms of design, perpetuating a timeless dimension of architecture grounded in its cultic and funerary origin. Finally, the article unveils how sacred aspects complemented twentieth-century scientific and vitalist approaches to human life, architecture, and curatorial practice, offering insights into the relation among architecture, psychoanalysis, media studies and artistic experiments.