(Re)design Death

2020

Visit

Sarco Short Film

Sarco at Venice Design 2019

Visit

What if we dared to imagine that our last day might also be one of our most exciting?

What if we had more than mere dignity to look forward to on our last day on this planet?

Highlights

Sarco @ NVVE 50th Birthday, 2023

June 5, 2023

The Sarco is viewed at the 50th anniversary celebration Dutch NVVE
Read More

Open End 2 – Geneva 2022

August 14, 2022

On 15 September 2022, Sarco will open as part of the Open End 2 Exhibition in Geneva.
Read More

Sarco@Cube Design Museum 2020

January 26, 2020

Sarco goes on display at Cube Design Museum in the Netherlands
Read More

The Idea

The concept of a capsule that could produce a rapid decrease in oxygen level, while maintaining a low CO2 level, (the conditions for a peaceful, even euphoric death) was the brief behind the Sarco.

When Exit was approached in 2012 for a technological solution for a UK man with Locked-in Syndrome, it was the Sarco that emerged. No doctor required and yet completely lawful.

The elegant design was intended to suggest a sense of occasion: of travel to a ‘new destination’ …

Features

Portable

Coffin incorpoated

3D Printed

Creator

Philip Nitschke

Philip Nitschke is the founder and director of Exit International.

A former medical doctor, in 1996 Philip helped four of his terminally ill patients to die using Australia’s Rights of the Terminally Ill Act.

Philip is the co-author of:

Killing Me Softly: Voluntary Euthanasia and the Road to the Peaceful Pill (with Fiona Stewart) (Penguin, 2005)
The Peaceful Pill Handbook (with Fiona Stewart) (Exit International, 2020)
Damned If I Do (with Peter Corris) (Melbourne University Press, 2013)

Philip has designed several end of life machines including the CoGen and the Destiny. The Deliverance Machine (used in the Northern Territory by his patients in 1996) is on permanent display in the British Science Museum in London.