Mount Auburn Cemetery: 200 Interment Sites

As Americans have developed more diverse attitudes toward burial and cremation in recent years, cemeteries have sought new types of interment space and innovative approaches to commemoration. This project provides two hundred new burials in lawn crypts, as well as areas for the location of cremated remains, within a narrow corridor along a well-defined edge of the Mount Auburn Cemetery. The design employs a curving perambulatory walk through alternating groves of native trees and shrub masses, with intervals of contemplative settings and carefully structured views toward Halcyon Lake. Single grave markers and shared forms of commemoration are placed among the groves, including recumbent stones, upright cubes, and vertical columns. The project is also intended to be prototypical for other edges of the cemetery in the future.

Team: Urban Instruments.

1999-2003