Placemaking, Urban Planning
Resting place for the dead, grieving space for the living.
2020
Land Scarcity in Singapore
With limited space for green and leisure purposes, Singapore faces a challenge to undertake the issue. As the population is anticipated to grow by a third in the next two decades, the land will only become scarcer and more sought after. Singapore’s limited space and strict restrictions on building height due to flight paths mean that space needs to be optimized.
Cemetery spaces are to be exhumed to make way for future development. Thus, what will the future of the cemetery be?
DISCONNECTED
After the cremation of a loved one, one becomes a world apart from another. Having visits to the cemetery or columbarium to ‘heal’ the lost only for a period of time.
Grief recovery differs from person to person. It may drag for years as one may choose not to deal with it. There is no way to solve grief. But it is an experience to be supported, witnessed and held.
DEATH IS NOT THE END.
The culture regarding death has remained unchanged from how humans have dealt with it. Having a day to send off the dead to their new realm with no intimacy related to the living. While the dead lay to rest, the living in grief. Like birth, death is a natural act of life. Normalizing death could be in for the future where we give death a space to grow with the living where there are action and flow.
To be part of the journey till we the one lay to rest.
Visiting graves shouldn’t be a special event but a daily routine.
For a period of time, it is the place to heal the great sorrow of losing a loved one, and to be an important place where one can always feel the deceased nearby.
To have an intimate visual and spiritual connection between the space and death itself.
CREMATION METHOD
Recompose founded by Katrina Spade invented a cremation method that converts human remains into the soil. This method is a long process and is much more sustainable than the conventional method. It becomes a whole cycle again as the soil supports the growth of the tree and the tree bark is taken to be used as part of the cremation process.
Beginning
When a person dies, the loved ones will host a funeral for the dead and would be brought over to Bloom to be cremated. As there are only 3 rooms, loved ones are to book the timing to prevent from clashing with others. Upon arrival, they are greeted with large wooden columns that separate the different stages of Bloom.
Visits
A period of the month of being composed as soil allows the loved one to keep on visiting their grave. The feeling of being part of the process throughout makes it a meaningful moment. This space also serves as a space to talk to strangers and exchange stories with them.
Relive
After a month's wait, the loved one would collect the soil back and could choose to bury it in the park. The journey continues with loves ones coming to the park to see the one bloom to be a new form of living.
THE JOURNEY WITH BLOOM CONTINUES, THE PLACE WHERE TWO WORLDS COLLIDE
