Fashion, Death, and Re-birth

Fashion, Death, and Re-birth challenges the dominant practices used in designing landscapes of grief and memory, within the context of Italian cemeteries, to reveal new approaches better suited to provide healing and celebration, at two of Milan’s decommissioned rail yards – Porta Genova and San Cristoforo. In establishing connections between the cultural significance of Italian architecture and Italian fashion, this project puts emotion and landscapes of personal and cultural significance - in this case, agriculture, water, and industry - at the center of storytelling and placemaking through design.

By designing for spiritual rejuvenation, through acts of celebrating culture and immersing oneself with ecology around Milan’s historic Naviglio Grande, my thesis positions landscape design as a tool through which we can rekindle our innate human connection to nature through life, and in death.