Designing for renewal in a landscape of death
While cemeteries have always been symbolic spaces, recent approaches to their design are embracing conditions of impermanence, multiplicity and change.
by Emma Sheppard-Simms 2 Sep 2024 Landscape Australia
Designing for renewal in a landscape of death | Landscape Australia
Burial space in Australian cities is in short supply. Creating new cemeteries is one solution; however, there is high competition for urban land, and local communities are often resistant to cemeteries.1 More sustainable modes of interment are urgently needed; however, any changes have to be approached with sensitivity as cemeteries are highly symbolic spaces. Recent recommendations include encouraging multiple land uses, integrating interment alternatives and legislating limited tenure for new graves.2 In addition to this, landscape architects have recently been designing new expressions of the cemetery that embrace conditions of impermanence, multiplicity and dynamic change in burial landscapes. This work is significant as it is beginning to challenge the traditional strategies of control, separation and isolation that have long been associated with the practice of perpetual burial. So, what are some emerging themes?
The rise of the multi-use cemetery
Recent designs for cemeteries in Australia integrate passive recreation, social opportunities and environmental rehabilitation, rethinking the role these places can play in local communities.3 Designed by Aspect Studios and BNV Architects in 2016, Bunurong Memorial Park, for instance, integrates a range of community uses, including a play space, extensive native gardens and a cafe, as well as a diverse range of memorialisation opportunities. Aspect Studios director Kirsten Bauer says the design aims to be “civic and reflective, rather than religious and too culturally specific.” From a planning perspective, the combination of much-needed facilities within a landscape of death can help gain the support of community groups who may be reluctant to accept new cemetery landscapes alone. Thus far, Bunurong has been well-received by the local community, particularly for its recreational opportunities; however, its location in a semi-rural area in Melbourne’s south-east means it is not as frequently visited as it might have been otherwise. In this sense, an opportunity exists to expand on this idea by developing multi-use cemeteries that are in closer proximity to inner-city and middle ring suburbs, addressing urban needs that are unique to these settings, such as the need for urban cooling or remediation of post-industrial landscapes.
The design for Bunurong Memorial Park integrates a range of community uses, including extensive native gardens, a play space, a cafe, and a diverse range of memorialisation opportunities.
The design for Bunurong Memorial Park integrates a range of community uses, including extensive native gardens, a play space, a cafe, and a diverse range of memorialisation opportunities. Image: Aspect Studios
Blending memorialisation with landscape processes
While multi-use cemeteries represent a significant shift towards integration, the practice of perpetual burial still poses practical challenges to their long-term sustainability. To free up space in the cemetery, grave recycling has been introduced in some states, including Western Australia, which has stipulated 25-year grave tenures since 1986.4 However, the removal of headstones remains controversial for the community.5 Part of the issue is that the grave architecture takes on the symbolic memory of the individual at the moment of burial. The removal of gravestones is a social taboo because it effectively erases memory itself: a stark reminder of our own mortality and eventual disappearance.
An alternative approach is that of “natural burial” where remains are buried in a bushland environment that contains minimal infrastructure. The masterplan of Acacia Remembrance Sanctuary in Western Sydney, for example, is groundbreaking for its combination of a natural burial ground with a defined conservation agenda: the protection of the critically endangered Cumberland Plains Woodland in Western Sydney.6 Developed by McGregor Coxall and Chrofi between 2014 and 2016, it is intended is to tread lightly on the landscape by replacing headstones with GPS markers. Instead of a static stone monument, memory is linked to a place that is subject to dynamic change and decay, adding an overlay of cultural significance that functions as a form of environmental protection. It is a beautiful type of symbiosis, and particularly so because grave reuse may be easier to implement in future cemeteries if transformation becomes an accepted part of the landscape aesthetics.
Fostering biodiversity through rewilding
This transition to dynamic ecological change has also recently been fostered within existing urban cemetery landscapes. Project Cultivate is a pilot developed by the Southern Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust (SMCT) to re-establish the endemic grasslands that once grew in inner Melbourne. Since June 2023, 120,000 native species have been planted on graves with no headstones at Melbourne General Cemetery, encouraging a “rewilding” of the landscape that reduces the need for herbicides, mowing and slashing. According to Helen Tuton, Horticulture Assets Manager at SMCT, the initiative has already yielded some impressive benefits, including “the cooling of summer temperatures by three degrees Celsius, reduced erosion, increased biodiversity, and a 30 percent drop in herbicide use.” These are remarkable achievements in so short a time, demonstrating what can be achieved when cemeteries are regarded as living and dynamic spaces that can contribute to the ecological health of the city.
New roles for design
A consortium including Architectus, Aurecon, McGregor Coxall and Greenshoot Consulting has further developed many of these ideas about impermanence, integration of uses and landscape renewal within an ambitious masterplan for a new cemetery – Harkness Cemetery – in Melton on Melbourne’s western fringe. The project, which commenced in 2021, is still in development; however, the first stage has revealed a promising combination of memorialisation, rehabilitation of local waterways, engagement with the site’s Traditional Custodians, and a wide range of social and environmental uses.7 More research needs to be undertaken into the long-term management of natural burial spaces to understand, for instance, how trees respond to soils that are continually disturbed by interment, as well as how willingly the general community will accept ecological processes and transformation as part of landscapes of remembrance.
What’s next?
Of course, many other ideas have been proposed to address the burial space issue, including the construction of high-rise cemeteries, mausolea and columbaria; virtual memorials; and sea burial. These have emerged together with a plethora of technological alternatives for bodily disposal, including human composting and alkaline hydrolysis, many of which remove the need for a centralised cemetery landscape altogether.8
Yet, older cemetery landscapes still exist and remain intertwined with our urban form and collective urban memories in complex ways. While the practice of perpetual burial has had the effect of temporarily “freezing” the cemetery landscape in time, the future legalisation of grave recycling has the potential to open up many directions for the gradual evolution of highly integrated, ecologically responsive, multi-use urban landscapes. In this way, our current landscapes of death have the potential to become landscapes of perpetual renewal.
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