Anna Petersson

Wax esters produced by solvent-free energy-efficient enzymatic synthesis and their applicability as wood coatings

The study aimed at developing a process for making a wood coating wax based on the principles of green chemistry. The research was conducted within the Swedish interdisciplinary research programme Greenchem. Wax esters are attractive since they are non-hazardous, biodegradable and can be produced in an atom-efficient process from building blocks obtained from renewable resources. Four wax esters were prepared in a solvent-free process using an immobilised lipase as catalyst. When the water was removed during the process from what was initially an equimolar mixture of the starting materials carboxylic acid and alcohol by a stream of dry air passed through the reactor, there was a 95–99% conversion to the ester. The enzymatic process consumed 34% less energy and generated less waste than chemical esterification using a strong acid as catalyst. Two of the esters worked well in the industrial wood coating equipment employed and produced surfaces resistant to water and somewhat less to fat stains.

Designing a Memorial Place: Continuing care, Passage landscapes and Memories of the Future

Abstract The design and selection of a memorial stone and the site of the grave, both of which represent the deceased, can be a central issue for people bereaved by traffic accidents. This was revealed in an interview survey of recent Swedish roadside memorials and other memorial places. In this article we consider the design and selection of the memorial stone and gravesite as expressions of continuing care for the deceased and as a way to offer comfort to the bereaved. Materiality, representation and presence will be discussed as crucial parts of the link between the living and the dead. Communicative, spatial and physical values are important also in the professionals design of common public memorial places. Of specific interest for this text are two design practice-based terms, memory object and passage landscape, which may be used by landscape architects when designing memorial places, such as cemeteries and public monuments. Throughout this text, we argue that memorial places like these are capable of bridging the gap between the space of life and the space of death, as well as supporting the regeneration of present memories and the construction of future ones.

Swedish Offerkast and Recent Roadside Memorials

The erection of roadside memorials in Sweden is commonly considered a novel practice. However, it bears certain similarities with earlier traditions, especially, the so-called offerkast, a pile of sticks or stones thrown on the site of a death on the road.

The Production of a Memorial Place: Materialising Expressions of Grief

This chapter will look at why, how and in what way a spontaneous memorial may develop: from an immediate act to a more planned place of grief and remembrance (Clark and Franzmann 2006, Nieminen Kristofersson 2006, Klaasens, Groote and Huigen 2009). Of special importance for this investigation are the noticeable differences in attitudes to and growths of roadside memorials revealed by data gleaned from interviews that I conducted with informants in 2005 on the subject of recent Swedish roadside memorialisation. As well as the various viewpoints on the production of memorials on public ground found in two applications requesting to erect memorials on sites of individual deaths in the city of Malmo, Sweden, sent to and responded by the Streets and Parks Department in Malmo. In order to illustrate these perspectives this text will start with presenting some examples from the 2005 interview survey. Thereafter a presentation of the two requests, and the statements issued to them, will be made. I will then move on to discuss the given examples in the light of the anthropologist Jean-Pierre Warnier’s idea of ‘the three media of symbolization’ (Warnier 2001), dealing with the internalisation of a difficult experience in the past, and the philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection (Kristeva 1982), working on the exclusion and rejection of that which is threatening. In this discussion, I will forefront the material world as an important media for expressing, communicating, experiencing and understanding loss and bereavement (Aynsley, Breward and Kwint 1999, Hallam and Hockey 2001, Valentine 2008: 114–23). (Less)

Room of silence: an explorative investigation of design students’ redesign of an arena for reflection and existential meaning-making

Abstract This paper explores design students’ proposals for a redesign of the interior of a room of silence at the SUS hospital in Malmö. Reflection and existential meaning-making are discussed in relation to the material culture of design, and more specifically in relation to four different themes found among the students’ proposals: nature as common symbolic framework and salutary force; lighting creating a visual and spatial ambience for retreat; interactive objects allowing ritualised activities; and the presence and absence of religious symbols. In this paper, we argue that architecture and design more profoundly could support people with varying existential viewpoints when it comes to providing religiously and culturally shared public spaces for dealing with existentially crucial moments. We also argue for an interdisciplinary research approach to healing environments, where existential meaning-making is included in the overall discussion of the design of health care architecture.

Urban cemetery animals: an exploration of animals’ place in the human cemetery*

Abstract This paper investigates the place of animals in the contemporary Swedish human cemetery. It does this by looking at how animals are admitted to cemeteries – alive and dead, above and below ground, physically as well as symbolically. The aim is to shed light on the various ways that animals are experienced and treated in the cemetery, and to explore how this both reflects our changing attitudes to animals and our changing attitudes to death. The paper draws on the findings from a qualitative interview study carried out at the Eastern Cemetery in Malmö, Sweden, and a follow-up study of a turtle pond, in Malmö-Limhamn Cemetery. Two different perspectives relating to animals in the cemetery were common to these studies: (1) the liminal role of the companion animal; and (2) aesthetics and care in relation to wild and domesticated animals. The two perspectives, considered as findings in their own right, are used in this paper as a foundation for discussing questions relating to how urban cemetery animals can enrich the cemetery environment and increase the importance of urban cemeteries today and in the future.