DEATH AS SOUVENIR. A DNA FRACTURE IN RIO

Approximately 0.5% to 1.4% of people end their life by suicide. Globally, as of 2008/2009, suicide is the tenth leading cause of death with about 800,000 to one million people dying annually, giving a mortality rate of 11.6 per 100,000 persons per year. Rates of suicide have increased by 60% from the 1960s to 2012 with these increases seen primarily in the developing world. For every suicide that results in death there are between 10 and 40 attempted suicides. In most forms of Christianity, suicide is considered a sin, based mainly on the writings of influential Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages, but suicide was not considered a sin under the Byzantine Christian code of Justinian, for instance. Counter-arguments include the following: that the sixth commandment is more accurately translated as “thou shalt not murder”, not necessarily applying to the self; that God has given free will to humans; that taking one’s own life no more violates God’s Law than does curing a disease; and that a number of suicides by followers of God are recorded in the Bible with no dire condemnation. DEATH AS SOUVENIR. A DNA FRACTURE Rio de Janeiro is what their yesteryear tourists, share with us today. In many cultures death is considered the most extreme face of evil. Suicide is the most painful because it means a sign of gaps in community systems that prevent people from having a full life. A suicidal person is immediately tagged by society as misfit, weird… crazy. When someone takes his own life, society fails because the person committed an act so overwhelmed, intimate and free that attacked his own nature, this is, the same nature of all of us. In a city so clearly polarized, where good and evil, wealth and poverty, happiness and sadness are mixed in situations that lead people to limit behaviors such as suicide, perhaps the only way to generate a fracture in the DNA of an improper society, is a beautiful, dignified and voluntary death as a way back to the collective consciousness… “I don’t kill myself by disgust at everything. Nor by denial of the beautiful and the sacred. Simply everything finishes… and I am not the exception.” Conscious human death becomes here a new idea of sustainability. PLATFORMS FOR A BEAUTIFUL DEATH A new architectural typology emerges in Rio: the jumping platform. Boats take interested people to one of the platforms located near the coast. Inside people work what will be the last act of their lives. At each level a psychological aspect is treated, and only with permission, people move up through the outer ramp allowing them to see what they have left behind. After some time (may be years) some give up his idea and return to land with a conscience more open, full and serene. Others reach the top with the same security that got them there, jumping into the sea. In the distance there are always tourists who believe it is a new city attraction with professional divers.