Graveyards Reaching Into The Sky.
What’s the point? According to a recent Slate.Com article, the notion of a vertical graveyard could be the future.
It most definitely already is the brainchild of Swedish students at the School of Architecture, Lund University. These master’s candidates – Fredrik Thornström and Karolina Pajnowska – think their structure plan can help solve the problem of overcrowded cemeteries in the country’s urban areas.
The plan, according to Slate.Com: takes on “the concept of a vertical cemetery that would involve repurposing a disused grain silo in Malmo – the country’s third-largest city—into a crematorium and columbarium.”
Bringing life and death together, they also have ideas about turning a neighboring silo into much-needed housing for the area’s residents.
Tentatively, “The House of the Living and the House of the Dead” would create space inside skyscraper cemeteries for a ceremony hall for funeral services. Shelves winding along the inner walls would house the cremated remains of loved ones in urns.
Artistic touches would include small windows on the wall that could also serve as memorial slots similar to those found in a traditional columbarium.
Grain to Graveyard
Going from grain to graveyard the silo idea is, at the very least, interesting and innovative. It’s green in that it uses already structures. Such recycling has the potential to make a great deal of sense in locations with limited burial grounds available for expansion.
But it will be up to the community to decide whether or not they want a skyscraper cemetery.
What do you think about it?