| dc.description.abstract | Cemeteries are sacred spaces that have the ability to evoke awareness, fear, awe, reverence,
memory and other high emotions that transcend the spatial. When one thinks about a cemetery,
it is often a mystifying space embedded with the eternal promise of death, an endpoint of life,
“a final resting place”. However, these landscapes exist among the abiding city that is very much
alive; creating a tension between recording death, the landscape, and the organisms of the
city. Still, these spaces are permanent green spaces within the urban environment- that occupy
substantial community space. For this reason, they pose public issues- burial has social, cultural,
political, and environmental implications. When ignored, the tension of the cemetery amongst the
didactic, evolving, and fluid nature of the city can create a landscape which is static and forgotten.
This thesis challenges existing cemetery models wherein the significance of designed elements
have been forgotten, rituals rewritten, and a barrier created between Americans and their dead. A
hybrid approach is explored, through research by design, to elevate the cemetery to a complexity
which is accessible and a part of the urban realm. A series of design explorations is tested at the
intersection of three historic cemeteries in a parking lot in Columbus, Georgia. The aim of the thesis
is to illustrate that rituals can act as a lens for cemetery design, and still be sensitive to remembrance
and the psychological necessity for grief. The thesis seeks to reanimate community rituals into
the cemetery, suggesting the cemetery is a landscape as much for the living as it is for the dead. | en_US |
