deviant deathscapes

Deviant Deathscapes, considers how landscape architecture could leverage advancements in green funerary technologies, known as natural organic reduction or human composting, to culturally and ecologically re-frame our relationship to death and grief through the creation of a new form of deathscape. This project is inspired by the fact that cemeteries are unique liminal spaces, capable of bringing together disparate states of decay, life, nature, and culture. For this reason, the design and programmatic strategies prioritize hybridity and transitionally. The representation style was thoroughly considered and thus all renderings were produced via pen and ink by hand. Conceived as both a cemetery and an urban food forest, the project is not a static memorial but rather an animated system that uses edible plants grown in human compost to address and challenge western society’s fraught relationship with death and impermanence through direct engagement with different phenomena of life and time. This project posits that our proximity to death can help us see death and impermanence in a new light, as something generative, and that the physical landscape should reflect this shift.