“Family Tree” Design Integrates SMS Technology with Urns

Photo credit: http://news.cnet.com

SevenPonds recently highlighted the “Design for Death” competition by Designboom, which featured many innovative end-of-life creations — winners ranged from a biodegradable coffin to a device by Studio PSK that can “turn a loved one into rain” after their passing. Another award-winning design that caught our eye is, Family Tree, by Loucas Papntoniou and Asta Sadauskaite.

The Lithuanian designers entered their invention into the contest – which boasted 2,050 designers from 96 countries – to win first place in Designboom’s “Wrapping of Mortality” category. The designers proposed a hexagonal urn that can be placed inside a display wall beside other family members “to create a literal family tree of urns” as various members are added over time. It’s a modern take on a classic concept – and quite a departure from the dusty, shelf dwelling family albums that often come to mind when we first hear the words “family tree.”

It’s a modern take on a classic concept – and quite a departure from the dusty, shelf dwelling family albums that often come to mind when we first hear the words “family tree.”

Photo credit: http://connectingdirectors.com

But what makes the design so very contemporary is its use of SMS-based technology. “The urn vault is made of wood,” explain Papntoniou and Sadauskaite, “with an OLED display cap [which] emits a serene, pulsing light that conveys spirituality and displays the name of the deceased with a short memorial message.” The message can then be activated (and even edited) via cell phone.

“Family Tree ensures that the love family members share for each other in life will continue for eternity,” say the designers, though others might argue that the digitalization of end-of-life is an inappropriate integration of today’s technology. Is there something to be said about the fact that our phone – a place typically reserved for texting trivialities and instagraming breakfasts – has also synched itself to the very serious task of managing end-of-life matters? Perhaps. But it also shows an admirable integration of death into the every-day. Family Tree is a marriage of old and new that renders end-of-life planning more accessible and less taboo.

Related SevenPonds Articles:

• Design for Death: “I Wish to Be Rain” by Studio PSK
• Poetree: The Innovative Urn
• Crazy Coffins: An Innovative Approach to End-Of-Life Receptacles