The Bajau Laut or Sama Dilaut people are an ethnic group of sea nomads who used to roam between the Filipino, Malaysian, and Indonesian maritime zones. The Bajau are known to be amazing freedivers, being able to dive in depths of up to 30 meters and having the ability to hold their breath for more than 5 minutes, making them a group of people that biologically adapted into an amphibious lifestyle.

In 1877, most present-day Sabah, Malaysia, was surrendered to the newly constituted British North Borneo Chartered Company. The reforms constituted by the Company gradually forced them to self-build the first pile house setlements in 1955 and abandon nomadism for a sedentary lifestyle along the shore in 1979. Due to their nomadic lifestyle in the past, none of the three SE Asian countries have recognized the community as indigenous people, making them stateless and hence depriving them of the right to civil registry, subsidized healthcare and education with the exception of Alternative Learning centers that are run by NGOs and volunteering teachers. However, what is the position of Alternative Learning Centers regarding indigenous educa􀆟on and the importance of school as an establishment?

Alternative learning centers offer basic literacy classes such as Malay language and Mathematics. Still, volunteering, uncertified teachers have the freedom to improvise by introducing classes related to their major or the children’s wishes. However, only a small part of the curriculum has anything to do with the community’s traditional ecological knowledge or identity.

How do we define literacy nowadays? What deems a person illiterate? This project aims to redefine schooling by introducing a culturally responsive curriculum in a community waterscape that acts as a mediator between the community's built environment and the surrounding marine landscape, prioritizing knowledge stemming from both environments.

Life is a linear progression of the past, present, and future. Death is an inevitable part of this sequence, signifying the end. As an emotional response to a loved one’s death, grief comprises several emotions and stages. Since antiquity, the commemoration of the deceased has been an integral part of emotion management for the bereaved. Northern European artists and writers perceived nature as a symbol of grief and death. Cemeteries such as the Woodland cemetery in Stockholm, Sweden, confirm this tendency. Funerary spaces interweave the physical and the spiritual world by containing grief in nature and experimenting with shadow and light and the presence or absence of materiality.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic and the massive deaths resulted in an emergency in funeral services worldwide. Restrictions such as social distancing, the use of face masks, isolation, a limit on the number of guests allowed, and not being allowed to touch the deceased’s body severely affected the way grief is experienced among the bereaved. The outburst of COVID-19 also affected the way funerary rituals were performed. Several funeral rituals were broadcasted digitally, making the body no longer the physical means of mourning. These practices have given birth to new grieving rituals on the Internet, an immaterial tool designed to instantly share moments of the users’ lives. However, are these emerging means of digital mourning as effective as material mourning? How should designers treat funerary architecture in the rapidly digitalizing age we live in? What can architecture learn from digital mourning rituals?