Modern cemetery: a landscape of memories

Abstract

Over the past 50 years, vast improvements in the fields of medicine and technology have led to an exponential rise in life expectancy rates and the global population has skyrocketed to an all-time high. The current world population of 7.3 billion is expected to reach 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100, according to a new UN DESA report (Division, 2015) , “World Population Prospects: The 2015 Revision”, launched on July 29, 2015. A direct consequence of population growth: widespread housing projects pushing their way through already overcrowded cities to suburban areas. The green zones, rife with life that existed on the periphery of the city are no longer required and the cycle, which seems to have no end, continues. The organic growth of cities, better connectivity and enhanced infrastructure overshadow the growing need for spaces to inter the dead. As a result, urban cemeteries are being pushed out of the city, far away from the world of the living while the existing burial grounds are left desolate, untidy or are transformed into huge city centres or commercial districts. The need for re-integration of cemeteries or burial grounds into the folds of the urban fabric has been discussed and analysed through this thesis design project that aims to take into account the far reaching effects of the cemetery on the socio- anthropological, cultural, urban and natural landscapes as well as the spiritual and metaphysical connotations associated with the same. The design outcome envisions a funeral centre located in the heart of New Delhi, within the confines of one of the oldest British-era cemeteries of the capital, and seeks to transform the desolate landscape into a vibrant heritage tourist attraction and revive the old cemetery for the purpose it was originally intended.