Extra Connections

Mark A Miller ia a green architect and father of two young adults here in Chicago. "When my wife and I started our family, I was 36, the same age that my own father was when he died of a heart attack. As you can imagine, I was sweating bullets the first year of my daughter's life, worried I too may follow his fate. This forced me to ask myself, "should I die early, how can I keep loving and supporting my amazing daughter "from the other side". This lead me to think about where in our society is the place where the living come to meaningfully connect with the dead, which is a cemetery. As an architect I don't find the design of most cemeteries functions well for this act of "connecting". I've been re-imagining the design of cemetery into a much better model I call a "Spirit Park". In parallel to this goal, over the past 6 years I have created an app for parents, especially grandparents called Love Notes which helps parents and grandparents keep their hearts connected with their children/grandchildren now and f