Muerte, ciudad y arquitectura. Aproximaciones disciplinares para el estudio de los procesos de muerte en Buenos Aires, 1868 - 1903

Abstract

The following text was occasioned as a result of a sparingly developed field by our discipline, producing several questionings and difficulties at the moment of studying death ritual processes relationships, at the end of Nineteenth Century, in Buenos Aires. Assuming the enormous symbolical power provided by death, and the ways it
is elaborated and acted –process that usually begun in the bedrooms and hopefully ended within a dignified burial, in times of epidemics–, how are there no research works relating different phases of these processes, and its interaction with spaces?
Our first objective is to synthesize the main relationships between death practices and architecture historiography, based on the idea of style, monument and restoration. Regarding that these methods may contain certain limitations, according to our approaching intentions related to dwelling theories, we will introduce the notions of rite of passage, ritual, cultural performance and death process, that will enable us to conceive death as spacetime elaborations within complex territories and diverse architectonic and urban signification and interacting scopes. Finally, as a main objective to this text, we will introduce an investigation proposition, articulating these theories with our historical specialization field.