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A Funerary Paradigm

Part 2 Project 2013
Benjamin Juckes
 University of Western Australia Nedlands | Australia
A cemetery contains within its boundary an historical model of our society, reflecting each era, its culture, achievements and understandings.

The current typology of the cemetery is rapidly becoming inefficient and unable to keep up with the urbanisation and densification of cities. Perth is proving no exception; its current cemeteries are limited by their surroundings unable to expand. The city must now plan its future cemeteries with the opportunity to rethink its funerary paradigm.

This new paradigm will describe future possibilities for repose and remembrance by reflecting on and addressing societal, cultural and ecological trends and issues.

The paradigm will be developed over two stages

Stage one: the ‘Future – Present’
Responds to the deep cultural and spiritual need for remembrance, maintaining the ritualistic and processional values of the ceremonies associated with death, whilst also considering the current urban, ecological and cultural issues of burial space shortages and water shortages. A new concept of information preservation is introduced. Societal shifts towards increased digitalization allows for the reconstruction of our ‘digital lives’ to shape the way we are remembered after death.

Stage two: the ‘Future – Future’,
Ensuring the cemetery continues as a location for remembrance once it has reached full capacity circa 2050, at a point in time where the difference between the real and the digital is diminishing. It employs design speculation as a critical tool to explore the potential ways in which the cemetery is shaped by our ever-evolving city, social values and digitisation.

The outcomes maintain the ceremonies and rituals society requires to honour the dead, enhance remembrance; and create a symbolic and practical unification with ecological needs – finally the cemetery comes to reflect the cycles of change, adaption and understanding that shape society.


Tutor(s)
2013
The traditional typology of a cemetery was rapidly becoming inefficient, unable to keep up with the urbanisation and densification of the city the cemetery became a hidden burden on its infrastructure. Extracts from an interview conducted by Lucille J
“We send our dead to the edges. Where the city stops and wilderness flickers they are bound, cold, in stone and soil. This is how it has always been; at the edge of things dreams are born and life is stretched finer and further. This is where we go to mou
The city grew. It wrapped this place, but dreams and clouds are not made of concrete or glass. Earth is bound in water, but the dead became the sky. As the city fled forward and away the cemetery waited; it settled on the sand and then, well, then it shuc
The Jindowie Cemetery can be broken down into two critical stages, pioneering a new paradigm. Stage one: the ‘Future – Present’ Responded to the deep cultural and spiritual need for remembrance, maintaining the ritualistic and processional values of t
Adapting the existing infrastructures water, will continue to be an integral component of the SITE , injected in the poetic, circulatory and ecological systems. The unifying medium will collect and drive all the aspects of the cemetery. The desali
Inside, the sound of water is a meditation; it is the noise that the sea makes, and the rain and the deep underground wells that feed the trees that grow here. Here. This place, this starburst place of death and life, can only exist on these dunes. These
The procession continues, elevating you above the cemeteries datum point. Overlooking the columbarium’s allowing the landscape to colonizes your gaze, the narrow path channels your focus, feeling for the first time your own presence amongst the many. A
This rolling mass of flashing moments is who you were. It is an essence, a dusting of your thoughts and words and deeds that, once, would drift and vanish into silence and nothing. It is a dark mirror, and it does not shirk from what was true. The parts
By salvaging the brine, a salt/ mineral extract from the desalination process combined with sand, a silica composite is digital forged using the heat transfer from the Crematoriums. Depending on the data received the encoded forms tackle a spectrum of
The void is there for those who come to mourn. Like the dark parts of the mind, in the leaping space where thoughts are made, this place is needed. It was built to give space for reflection, time for grief, and method for recovery. The empty space is a
Sprawling North to south, mimicking the cycle of the city. The columbarium's house the cremated ashes. Digital archive’s collect and configure the data that was once, represents you in the cloud. Wills and testimonies left behind by the deceased, alo
The site is the anchor; the cloud is tethered by place but free in space. You use the cemetery as a place to dream from, a place to reimagine and recreate. Plastered on the sky like a thousand stars, complex and beautiful, are the moments shared with the
The hovering extrusions provide a surface. A collective screen, defined by the society that made it, to visualise those long forgotten moments, favourite memories in a galactic view of the individuals life. Accessibility of the visulisations can only
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