High-Rise Cemeteries

April 7th, 2005 | Filed under: Architecture, Future, News, Sustainability | 3 Comments »

Government officials in Hong Kong are looking for solutions to their growing need of spaces for the dead (which will run out in 2007). One solution is to build high-rise columbaria. Stacking the dead isn’t new (ex: stacked graves of Chile), but an acceptance of stacking the dead into a high-rise fashion would be a significant shift in our relationship to death and the dead.

via BBC | Thanks,JB.

This hits close to home for me, since my B. arch thesis was a proposal for a vertical grave and an interactive columbarium combined with a subway station. The idea was to reconsider the relationship to death by inserting cemeteries (which are usually on the fringes of American society, both specially and emotionally) back into Downtown Lower Manhattan.

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