Place and identity: What can we learn from the dead?
tom lee uts.academia.edu
In his book Last Landscapes (2003), Ken Warpole notes that, for a number of reasons, cemetery architecture is the most conservative aspect of the institutions and practices surrounding death and memorialisation in the West. This is starting to
In recent years cemeteries in Sydney have received increasing public attention as burial capacities have been reached and residential communities have surrounded these formerly separated spaces. A convergence of concerns about declining burial space, a lack of available cemetery lands, increasing cost of urban land and the growing proximity between cemeteries and residential areas has provided the catalyst for several Government publications concerning the future design and management of cemeteries in Sydney (NSW Department of Lands 2005 & 2008). Within this research, a rethinking of the design and urban role of cemeteries contributes a landscape perspective that has been so far missing from this discourse. There are two interrelated components within the thesis, involving theoretical and design-based modes of investigation. The first part involves a review of key literature to understand how cemeteries in Sydney have evolved as landscapes that both reflect society’s changing attitudes towards death, decay and memorialisation in the city, as well as the qualities of the dynamic physical environment. It is proposed that by revealing that the cemetery is the sum result of constructed social ideas plus ecological systems; opportunities for and ideas about new expressions of cemetery space may find room to emerge. The second part of this research involves a design-based exploration of alternatives for cemetery design and management in Sydney. These alternatives have been generated via selected principles of landscape urbanism, a movement that has focused on the active potential of landscape as a means for reconnecting the latent, disconnected, forgotten and marginalised spaces of the city. This research reveals future opportunities for the cemetery that are based not only in modes of burial or cemetery use, but in a re-evaluation of what constitutes the cemetery landscape itself. Design, management and planning strategies involving connection of the cemetery landscape to its contextual social and ecological systems, the recognition and provision for process and change within the cemetery and the possibilities for hybridity of use within and beyond the cemetery, are all found to open up new opportunities for addressing burial space issues within urban contexts such as Sydney.

This paper elaborates on the design of a place for mourning as a new use for an abandoned church building and its surroundings. Rather than replacing Christian worship with a secular program, the project aims to reactivate and strengthen the historical presence of spirituality by adding new layers to the design of this historic church. Using the singularity of the place and the quality of its rural landscape as catalysts, the proposed design seeks to place death and the act of mourning within a broader and renewed spiritual experience by borrowing and associating concepts related to rituals from different cultures and times. Besides a columbarium and a funeral space, the site may be used as a place for the celebration of life and its memory or simply as a meaningful place to meet with family or friends. The church, for which an adaptive reuse proposal is discussed in this paper, is one of many in Flanders that, in recent years, has lost its religious function as the result of the se...

The design and selection of a memorial stone and the site of the grave, both of which represent the deceased, can be a central issue for people bereaved by traffic accidents. This was revealed in an interview survey of recent Swedish roadside memorials and other memorial places. In this article we consider the design and selection of the memorial stone and gravesite as expressions of continuing care for the deceased and as a way to offer comfort to the bereaved. Materiality, representation and presence will be discussed as crucial parts of the link between the living and the dead. Communicative, spatial and physical values are important also in the professional’s design of common public memorial places. Of specific interest for this text are two design practice-based terms, memory object and passage landscape, which may be used by landscape architects when designing memorial places, such as cemeteries and public monuments. Throughout this text, we argue that memorial places like these are capable of bridging the gap between the space of life and the space of death, as well as supporting the regeneration of present memories and the construction of future ones.

The study of cemeteries, with their accumulated material culture, is a popular topic in historical archaeology, eliciting a number of methodological approaches. This paper describes the application of a phenomenological approach, best known previously in archaeology for its use in prehistoric landscape studies, to a historical public cemetery. The plan and layout of the colonial section (1837–1900) of Adelaide’s West Terrace Cemetery is analysed within the context of nineteenth-century visitation patterns, prevailing attitudes to death and burial in Britain and their influence on South Australian colonial society, to consider what factors influenced the layout, selection, placement, accumulation and display of material culture within the cemetery. The study concludes that beyond the immediate practicality of the deceased’s disposal, the colonial cemetery landscape developed during a time of more regulated cemetery visitation, was intended as a place of movement and experience demonstrating private and public expressions of religious and social beliefs to the observer. Its conscious construction was designed to project a sensory experience of prevailing attitudes to death, burial and society in the nineteenth century. The visitor immersed within this landscape, was engaged in a reflexive sensory dialogue through the mediums of space and material culture. This experiential communication could invoke the power of memory to conjure the deceased’s persona, invite contemplation of personal loss, prevailing community attitudes and religious beliefs, and reaffirm and perpetuate social worldviews.