Design the memorial hall

Before I was able to start planning and designing the memorial for my father, the first priority is to confirm the memorial location and the number of guests. After numbers of discussion meetings, the consensus from the elders was to rent the largest funeral hall, which seats 1,000 people from the Kaohsiung City Mortuary Office. I paid the site a visit, and was very shocked by the hideous poor condition of the funeral building. My objective was to transform this bare space. There were only 2 weeks to plan and organize, and 48 hours to put everything together. On top of which, I was in mourning and had zero experience in space design.

Firstly, I obtained a copy of the floor plan. From paper, it is apparent to notice the main flaw of the building is the location of the door entry. The door opens at the side of the hall, and very close to the front of the stage. If the service is in progress, assuming some guests will arrive late, which is a very likely possibility, they will be coming in and create distraction to the memorial.

Also, the hall despite its lack of any finish and character, is also completely bright with double-tier windows all around. Considering that we will be holding my father's memorial at eight o'clock in the morning, this means if leave it untreated, the service hall will be just as bright as if is held outdoor.

Instead of printing out huge photo to hang at the funeral hall as conventionally done, I wanted to play on screens the imagery of my father. Not only its more engaging to look at, also create less unnecessary large-scale printouts, that are not only dull and wasteful in the end.

Basically, this funeral hall needs to be covered in every inch. Almost none of its original structure is fit to be seen. 

Normally the 祭台 (front table for the deceased's 牌位)  is on the floor. But I want to elevated the entire front table, to create a holy visual focus in the center.

Color-wise, this entire hall had to be covered from ceiling to wall, and carpeted throughout. Practically, I had to consider the cost of the material. The only fabric available was the traditional synthetic white silk. It was a very cheap thin fabric, very white and floaty. In short, it was a very unattractive material, largely used in traditional Chinese funeral. But considering all the decoration was to be torn down immediately after the memorial service, it was unwise to use expensive fabric to cover the entire space. So I compromised with this restriction, and decided on the strictly white-and-black color scheme for the hall design.

Since the choice of fabric was a given, the chalky whiteness needed to be dealt with. For that, lighting design became essential. In order to add warmness and richer hues to the general whiteness in the space, I hired a crew of lighting and sound professionals to work with as well.

In the end, by simplifying the visual messiness in color and materiality inside the memorial hall, the space was transformed into a serene and peaceful environment.

With all the fine-tuning done the night before, on the actual day of the memorial service, bright and early in the morning, the service hall was serenely quiet with over-thousand of guests. Everyone was able to watch the video playing on the three large overhead screens in the properly dimmed memorial hall.