Limen

Limen is a project about grief as a liminal period, and grieving households as liminal locations. My design partner and I sought to explore how grief lives with the bereaved, not simply in their minds but also in their spaces.

While many people physicalize grief in their homes through behaviours such as creating shrines, hanging photographs, or leaving a chair empty at the table, there are not many (secular) grief-specific options on the market for doing so, and none that have become commonplace. We developed a series of products that formally physicalizes grief, imagining a company, Limen, that creates objects to exploit physical outputs and expressions of mourning.

Our project consists of several parts. Our primary product is an innovative solution for final body disposition. Our two secondary products serve as decorative, interactive, and symbolic reminders of the person lost. The company, Limen, and its catalogue (containing several other product concepts) serve as the vehicle to convey our thinking around grief, and provide a glimpse into a potential future market and reality.

The world in which this company exists is a later version of our own, a future where decorating with grief is routine. The movement towards normalizing expression of emotion and increased sensitivity has prevailed, and extended into areas of life that are currently still taboo.

Of course, grief continues to live in private spaces, but it is not hidden. Companies like Limen will take advantage of this fact. Limen does not seek to fix grief, to prevent it or to end it. It simply seeks to provide products to address, beautify, and display grief, keeping it alive in the home.