Glorious, Somber Decay: Living with Death in the 21st Century

In today's death industry, many standard burial practices inhibit decomposition and ensure that land used for cemeteries has little ability for adaptation or improved ecological health of the site. Western culture has increasingly disconnected itself from death, often ignoring the inevitable until it is too late and making grief and mourning an isolating endeavor. This thesis seeks to address issues of climate and social resilience in death spaces, as well as creating an architecture that relieves the fear and disconnection to death and the mourning process prevalent in our society. The site is the former coal storage field of the Alexandria Power Generation Station in North Old Town, Alexandria, Virginia. The power plant was shut down in 2012, and has sat unoccupied, in part because pollution from the power plant has depleted soil nutrients and created a brownfield site. In this project, practices like Natural Organic Reduction (NOR), natural burial, and grave renewal are used to develop an adaptive site condition that embraces change and quite literally continues to build upon itself over time. Using the composted material from NOR on site will help restore the ecological health of the site by diluting the contaminated soil and create a method of phased layering to prevent overcrowding or filling up of burial plots. The architecture is designed to celebrate the natural processes of death, and to embrace the mourning process for those still living. As the visitor enters the building, they leave the "land of the living" and descend into the ground. As they travel through the building, natural light is gradually reintroduced to the interior spaces, and the visitor literally and metaphorically rises back out of the ground, as a symbol of healing and relief from their grief. Ceremonial spaces provide extensive views out over the site to connect both with the beautiful scenery of the Potomac River and the burial grounds surrounding the building, demonstrating a body's natural return to the earth after death.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Architecture

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Architecture

Department dc:contributor.department

Architecture

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Smith, Catherine Janice

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Kelsch, Paul J.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Feuerstein, Marcia F.
• Emmons, Paul F.

• death
• composting
• burial
• grief
• sustainable

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:37950

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/115565