Yip

Chapter 1 Catalyst

Chapter 2 My relationship to Death

Chapter 3 Death in the U.S.

Chapter 4 Perspective shift

Chapter 5 Speculative or pragmatic?

Chapter 6 Initial Concepts

Chapter 7 Anything but a stool

Chapter 8 Return to the stool

This work is dedicated to the memory of my mother Hope Cooper-Adler.

Thank you for everything. Yip!

Hope Cooper was born on December 24, 1959, during a snowstorm in Brooklyn, New York1. A free spirit her whole life, she approached each of her many projects with uninhibited creativity, often gluing found objects together or staging them out to get a sense of space2. Though she would get very frustrated when things did not go her way, she had the ability to step aside for a bit and come back with a smile as she figured things out. She used this very same resiliency and ability when she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in Fall 2020.

My mother taught me many things in life, especially towards the end. Strength, creativity, and the ability to find something to smile about even when things are catastrophically not going to plan, were some of her main lessons. This thesis is dedicated to her as a mother, a teacher, and a creative tour-de-force who never hesitated to try her wildest ideas.

In Fall 2022, it was decided after two years of hospitalizations and several close calls, that my mother would transition from curative measures to palliative/ hospice care. This event was a tough reality my family knew would come eventually, but nothing can really prepare you for when it happens.

She left the hospital to go to a rehabilitation center as a hospice patient. We were able to visit her in her private room 24/7, and the staff was attentive and compassionate. That being said, my family and I often found ourselves hovering or crouching over my mother’s bed, as there was not enough seating to accommodate all of us3. Her bed, with its guard rails, created a physical barrier that in turn began to create an emotional, spiritual distance. I desperately wanted to be able to get closer to her, to lie or sit right beside her, as I had always done since childhood, to be there with her.

Still, my family was able to feed, dance, sing with her, and we were even able to make a painting4 that she wanted for some time. After about a week and a half in hospice, she died. We learned a few days later that she was in the presence of a music therapist who sat with her and played Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” as she took her last breaths. What followed next were the seven days of ritualistic mourning known as the shivah of Jewish tradition. We stayed with her body until members of the burial society, or chevra kadisha, came to take over the watch and prepare her body for burial. We filled in her grave ourselves, as is our custom, tore our clothes, and headed home for the shivah to begin. Friends and family brought food and other distractions to our home. The mourners — myself, my siblings, and my father — sat on chairs that were low to the ground in our ripped clothes to both visually and spatially signify our new status. We spent that time in a state of shock, operating on autopilot. The shivah ended, the shock started to lift, and the grief set in.

1. Hope Cooper

3. Hope Cooper-Adler

2. Wood sculptures

4. Painting of Hope and our family pug Otis overlooking a mountain sunset

The catalyst

According to the spiritual leader Ram Dass, “Grief is one of our greatest teachers, it cracks us open.”1 In my cracked-open state, I began to think critically and curiously about my experience with my mother’s death. Why did it play out the way it did? How could such a feeling of disconnection have been created between my mother and me? What could I have done ... What could I do now?

I regretted not bringing a flatpack stool5 that I had designed a year prior to my mother’s hospitalization. She was so proud of me and how I presented it at a trade show that past May6. But I thought that it was too loose and low to the ground, potentially dangerous for any older family members who might have used it. “Where’s the stool?” my

1 RAM DASS, Walking Each Other Home: Conversations on Loving and Dying (S.l.: SOUNDS TRUE, 2022).

father asked when I entered my mother’s room shortly after her hospitalization. I told him, feeling defeated and embarrassed, that I left it at home.

I had the potential to design and produce something so basic that would have made such a difference and came up short. My father reassured me that I was a good son, but nevertheless, I made a vow to dedicate my thesis work to my mother, to do the challenging work of addressing her death and everything around it head on.

6. At WantedDesign

Manhattan 2022

←5. Flatpack stool

My relationship to Death

My first experience with death was when my opa (grandpa), a Holocaust survivor, died in 2006, when I was 7 years old. I do not think I really understood what death meant at the time, but I do remember the moment when my mother broke both of her ankles to prevent me from hitting my head after I slipped from her back as she carried me. She did this instinctively and had ankle pain for the rest of her life. Over a decade passed before I became reacquainted with mortality—students from my high school died; then came the loss of college dorm mates In 2019, an uncle died, followed within a year by the deaths of both grandmothers. A few months later, my twin sister had a near fatal health scare that shook me to my core. Then the Covid-19 pandemic began, claiming a stillgrowing number of lives.

In those first pandemic years, during which my mother’s inevitable death loomed, I lost a great-uncle who survived Auschwitz, and a first cousin, a palliative care physician who helped my mom,. My brother lost his best friend of 18 years, a childhood friend lost her child, my middle-school girlfriend died. I felt surrounded by death, terrified in the knowledge that it would just be a matter of time before it was my own mother’s funeral that I would be attending.

Chapter 3

in the U.S.

In the United States, discussing what happens when a person is dying is taboo. We are fine with pat phrases and clichés but get uncomfortable, lose our tongues, when someone we know has lost someone they loved. Death is seen as the direct opposite of all that is good in life. We do not want to be reminded of our own decline and eventual demise, so we separate death from life. Our dying loved ones are seen as bodies in decline, with nothing left to do but keep them as comfortable as possible. Their innate humanity is stripped away by the cold, institutional, and unfamiliar environments we thrust them into. This sterility and efficiency are crucial for their medical care, but what of their emotional or spiritual needs?

The cold instrument of the doctor has become more valued than the warm hand of the healer7. In the case of birth, midwives and doulas

rose to fill in the gaps; for death, it has been death doulas8. Trained to accompany a person from the hospital room to the grave, death doulas have a distinct view on mortality. To them, death is as natural as birth, a part of our existence.

7.

8.

Death

Chapter 4

Perspective shift

As a part of my research, I sought out media related to terminal illness and dying. I watched Endgame on Netflix after countless recommendations, and saw my mother represented in one of the patients. This film caused me to relive my recent experience alone in my apartment. I felt as though the very gray matter of my brain was crying, meditated in the darkness until the wave of grief subsided, then got right back to working on my presentation. I watched another film, End of Life, by John Bruce and Pawel Wojtasik. With this film, I did not relive my experience but watched death doulas working with the dying. It was beautiful and heart wrenching. The kindness Bruce and Wojtasik embodied was palpable, their interactions so human.

The death doulas, hospice, and palliative care professionals depicted in these films often pull from Zen Buddhist principles. More

than anything else, the concept of mindfulness, or as Ram Dass famously said, “Be here now,” is their guiding principle. They remain with the dying as they are and accompany them to any place they go. These practitioners are not looking ahead to the dying’s funeral or looking back to the day of their birth; they are right there with them.

It was difficult to begin working on my thesis. In the period following my mother’s death, when I returned to school, my grief was overwhelming. I was demotivated, even angry to be there. My mind felt scrambled, like a chicken whose head was cut off, as I said often. Nothing made sense to me, and I struggled with simple tasks, like writing emails. There were many sleepless nights, random grief attacks. My energy level was extremely low. This time was for me to process what had happened and figure out how to move forward as a person, and then

as a design student. Nevertheless, I was sometimes able to find the energy and strength to start researching my topic just weeks after my mother’s death. This was all possible because of the support that I received from my family, girlfriend, classmates, friends, and university faculty.

Chapter 5

Speculative or pragmatic?

My first concepts were amorphous, blob-shaped pieces of furniture9-11 that could replace the standard hospital bed— designs that focused on making room for both the dying and whoever was engaging with them. The image of two parallel chaise lounges was stuck in my brain. I even spent the morning before my mother’s funeral sketching them out. I used to love lying beside her as a little kid and made a point to continue whenever I visited her, especially after she got sick. When I was little, our favorite bedtime story was I LoveYou Forever by Robert Munsch1. It is about a little boy whose mother tucks him in throughout his life, saying, “I’ll love you forever, like you for always, as long as I’m living, my baby you will be.” When the son has grown up and the mother has grown old, the son tucks the

1 Munsch Robert N. 1945- and Sheila ill McGraw, Love You Forever (Scarborough, Ont: Firefly Books, 2000).

mother in, repeating the same words, substituting the last line with, “As long as I’m living my mommy, you will be!” I decided to read his part during the eulogy I gave for my mom. The feedback to my initial concept of “furniture to die in ‘’ was varied. Everyone agreed the thesis was powerful, but I was advised to think more abstractly about the positions of people’s bodies in space (the vertical visitor and horizontal patient), to keep my idea firmly grounded in reality, or, conversely, to think imaginatively. I found myself at a crossroads. I could either focus my efforts on making something that would push the boundaries of healthcare and furniture or work within the current system and make a small yet powerful improvement. Both directions were equally valid. I allowed myself to think both speculatively and pragmatically as I sketched out different concepts. I became fixated on the idea that what

I designed could be implemented ASAP, so the pragmatism won. I intend to revisit my more out-there ideas soon, but for now, for this thesis, I wanted to create something that injects a little more humanity into the alien, spaceship-feeling patient room.

9. Blob 1

10. Blob 2

11. Blob 3

Chapter 6

Initial concepts

Feeling stuck in my research, I decided to think like my mom and just start gluing stuff together12. I redesigned the hospital bed at full scale using tape drawing13. At the same time, I returned to the idea of creating attachments to the side of the bed and thought about making a finely molded plywood shell that would attach under the mattress, allowing the visitor to always stay close and level with the dying. Re-designing the whole bed would require decades of research conducted by a multidisciplinary team and is an incredibly worthwhile pursuit. However, the current beds are marvels of engineering and adequately perform all the functions needed to physically care for the patient. Anything that I would design

would need to account for all the problems these beds already solve. Given my limited skills and knowledge at this stage in my career, coupled with the time constraint of completing a thesis in 14 weeks, and the sense of urgency I felt to create a piece of furniture that could actually exist and make a difference in this space, I decided to simplify my concept as much as possible.

Once I decided what I was going to do, a fire reignited in me. The bed attachment, called a “sidecar”14 by an instructor, seemed like it would get in the way and be tricky to install. In initial conversations with Doshin Ende of the NYC Zen Center and John Bruce of Parsons School

of Design, both death doulas (Bruce was also a co-director of End of Life), they described the importance of being close to the dying. Doshin told me that as a medical chaplain going from room to room, she brought along a cane stool to sit on. John described needing to constantly readjust his body during his work on the End-of-Life project. John also explained to me the concepts of proximity and duration and their importance in filmmaking as well as end-of-life care. Furthermore, I discovered a passage in the Shulchan Arukh1 that described how “one who visits the sick should not sit on a bed or on a chair or on a stool but should sit in front of the patient, for the Divine Presence rests above a sick person.” This is only permitted if the sick themselves are in a bed. I had found my experience, my thoughts and feelings surrounding it, as well as my design direction, validated.

12. Glueing stuff together

13. Tape Drawing

14. “Sidecar”

1 Jack Riemer, Jewish Reflections on Death (U.S.A.: Random House, 1989).

Chapter 7

The loss of my mother left me feeling unstable, insecure, uninspired. I flirted with a fatalistic nihilism. If everything dies or ends someday, what was the point? What was the point of me continuing my studies, dealing with minutiae, becoming an industrial designer? I had found my reason, my passion, my excitement again, and I had also found like-minded professionals who caused me to feel empowered. To call these moments cathartic would be an understatement.

If attaching a seat to the bed would be a hindrance, the clear next step would be to make a freestanding height-adjustable chair. I started out by sketching typical office task chairs15, but their aesthetics and height-adjustment mechanisms made

15. Office chair sketches

Anything but a stool

them seem like another piece of equipment. What’s more, my research into medical guidelines1 led me to discover that those types of chairs are avoided sometimes because their bases can be tripping hazards and get tangled in wires and tubes. The pneumatic air tube is complicated to manufacture and increases the price of already overpriced task chairs.

There are simpler methods of achieving height adjustability that get the job done, and I began to experiment with different mechanisms16. I first considered using a threaded rod base that could be screwed up and down, but remembered how much they screech if not consistently oiled. I then

1. Guidelines for Design and Construction of Hospitals (St. Louis, MO: Facility Guidelines Institute, 2022).

16. Height adjustment methods

considered including various pivot points along a chair to allow changing the angles17 to change its height, but this was still too complicated. One of the simplest ways height adjustability can be achieved is through a board sliding in and out of slots at different heights18-19. I spent around a month just exploring this idea, right up until my midterm.

After engaging with this emotionally challenging work, showing up and sharing my vulnerability with my instructors and peers, sketching and prototyping, sketching and prototyping, I desperately wanted to take a small break. However, I spent most of that time trying to create a prototype that could be sat on, even in my dreams. In the end, I wound up with a fullscale model that broke after a few minutes of sitting20

At my midterm, I received feedback that suggested that my prototype was not the answer. It was poignant, but also too bulky, cumbersome, and heavy. The materials that I specified would be hard to include in a medical context, though they would bring warmth. The chair could be easily folded and stored away, but it could break a finger.

17. Angles

18. Slot sketches

19. Slot model

Chapter 8

Return to the stool

After the critics left, I knew deep down that I needed to go back a few steps and reconsider my form. One of my instructors, a classmate, and a guest critic, pointed me to my original stool, the one that I left at home. Conversing with my classmate, we discussed how my first stool could be made height adjustable by stacking cushions, using cushions21 of different heights, or even simpler, creating three bases of varying heights22. I also began to consider how this stacking could allow for different attachments such as arms or a back to be slotted in, enabling longer periods of sitting and ease of ingress and egress23. A former instructor of mine pointed out that the original was too heavy for an older person, like my grandfather, to move around, and suggested that I think about ways of removing unnecessary material.

22. Different height bases

23. Seat attachments

21. Cushion stacking

I began by simply offsetting the profile of the sides, removing around a third of the material. My stool, which at first looked like monolithic Donald Judd chairs, began to take on an art nouveau24 or craftsman25 style depending on the shape of the cutout.

25.Craftsman

24. Art Nouveau

Handles26-28 were added to the top to make it easy to move and carry the stool when it was disassembled, with the added benefit of creating an area against which users could brace when they needed to reground themselves.

28. Option 3

27. Option 2

26. Option 1

The top longer matched the base, which now needed to be reconsidered for both visual harmony and structural integrity. I started to think about my stool as a sculptor and became obsessed with resolving the outer profile29. I spent over a week debating whether the base should be straight, concave, convex, or have an S-curve30. The slight concave profile was chosen to reflect the concavity of the top, bringing them into harmony. The seat was made wider to better accommodate more body types, and due to the parameterization of the design, can be easily enlarged or reduced.

29.Convex vs. Concave

30. S-curves

I became excited to realize that the simplicity of the design, ease of manufacture, and parametrization of the dimensions meant that I could generate multiple typologies of furniture for different uses. This could have profound applications in a medical setting where an intermediary could meet with a family before, or even during, the patient’s relocation to the hospital, in time to create stools, benches and side tables, at the proper scale, for each specific family member31-33. There could be enough seating for everyone, surfaces for activities like making art or displaying objects or pictures from home, a place for beloved pets to perch. The topology of the room itself could become supremely comfortable. These moments, these last moments, their potential for profound and beautiful experiences could multiply, shepherding us through the unknown, reminding us that it is going to be okay. This is a manifestation of my vision for a more caring future, in a word, my hope34-35

31. System of care

33. Doshin Ende assembling stool

Sensei Koshin

Sensei Chodo

Malcolm Cooper

Siegy Adler

Ian C. Adler

Liza C. Adler

32. Peopling the stool

Reflection

Working on this project has been challenging. Challenging emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually. The process of grieving itself is non-linear and subjective. There is no right or wrong way to grieve, there is only your way. Every day for the last few months I have faced my project alternately exhausted, irritable, frustrated, depressed, overwhelmed, confused, energized, motivated, excited, overexcited, joyous, and sometimes calm.

The lines between my project and my personal experience were often blurred, complicating feedback and my responses to it. Though I was open to criticism of the technical aspects of my design, I sometimes felt as though I had to justify my lived experience, my trauma itself. The design process became enmeshed with my grieving,

and I was able to connect with incredible people who let me share my history and fundamentally altered my understanding of death, the design process, and myself. I have since decided to one day undergo death doula training in the contemplative care tradition.

For now, I will continue to work on improving people’s endof-life experiences and let myself process my mother’s death in my own way.

Caring is a creative act. We can do better. We can die better.

Ian Cooper Adler

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Acknowledgments

Thank you to all the professionals I had the pleasure of connecting with during this work. Gregory Beson, Allan Wexler, Yvette Chaparro Mark Bechtel, Julie Lasky, Andrew Lasky MD, Andrea Ruggiero, Jamer Hunt, Doshin Ende, John Bruce, Kerri Kearney RN, Dan Michalik, George Kordaris, Rama Chorpash, Robert Kirkbride, Tucker Viemeister, and Suzette Sherman

And to my family, girlfriend, friends, and classmates that supported me and made this possible. I could not have done this without all of you.

Yip!

“Grief is one of our greatest teachers. It cracks us open...That’s how the light gets in... it reveals the great healing power of love”

Ram Dass