"Building death. Cemeteries and the representation of death in Western culture."

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 1 / 19

BUILDING DEATH. CEMETERIES AND THE REPRESENTATION OF DEATH IN WESTERN CULTURE. “The cemeteries are in danger, for we no longer understand them. They have passed into the realms of the fabulous, and, as such, are embarrassing to our society because they actually exist.” James Stevens CURL. From The Victorian celebration of death. (Davis & Charles, London, 1972), p 180.

“And the dead here / we have a great time/ amongst flowers/ of different colors. / And some Fridays occasionally/ if there’s no plan in the grave/ we get dressed up and go out/ for a walk. / We don’t go across the door, of course/ because here/ is where the dead belong.”

From the song No es serio este cementerio (This cemetery isn’t serious) by Mecano, (Entre el cielo y el suelo, 1984, translation by the author.

Death has been a timeless cultural phenomenon, inspiring many different societies in differing ways. It is in fact closely tied to the birth of mankind: early burial ceremonies are sometimes considered one of the first signs of humanity. In classical cultures it went as far as actually describing men, as mortals, distinguishing them from immortal gods. The ability of self­ conscience, empathetic approach to other deceased humans, remembrance and mourning are therefore an essential part of the human condition.

Therefore, places that have been built specially for the purpose of allowing death to happen, in a way actively confining it, should be a good In this essay I will try to look at the different visions of death that have shaped cemeteries in Western civilization as an actual materialization of the concept of death. Funerary architecture had always been considered one of the most respected and popular, while all other buildings were considered simple 1

“constructions for ephemeral beings ”. It is also true that cemeteries are present in most Western city centers as urban voids that confirm their former Fig. 1. DECLINE OF CEMETERIES. Number of entries in the RIBA online catalogue per building categories. to show the minor concern on cemeteries. This is shared by prisons, another one of the Foucault heterotopias. Memorials however, gain more interest in contemporary society.

existence, becoming part of the history of the European city. However, in the th

20 century it became rare for architects to speak about their projects for cemeteries 2 . With few exceptions (Asplund, Rossi, Miralles), there is an unpleasant silence about cemeteries – and death. I tried to explore this recent change of attitude by comparing what could be regarded as a th

Source: made by the author. classical example of the 19 century (Kleverlaan cemetery in Haarlem) and

1

Pedro AZARA, The House and the Dead (On modern tombs). From La última casa/ The last house Mónica GILI, Ed. (Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1999), p 3.

2

Ibid.

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 2 / 19

a contemporary approach to funerary architecture, like Miralles’ Cementiri Nou at Igualada (Barcelona). I focused not so much on pointing out the differences but finding commonplaces, shared attributes that would allow building an outline of a typology for the Western cemetery, relating it to other representations and conceptions of death throughout time.

LOCKED DOORS, HIGH METAL FENCES WITH SHARP SPIKES. CEMETERIES DEFINING BOUNDARIES. Perhaps, the first of these shared attributes that would come to mind would be the situation of cemeteries as enclosed lands. Different kinds of boundaries are likely to confine most traditional cemeteries, detaching them from their surroundings. Nevertheless, even when those barriers are not physically present there seems to be a perpetual cultural wall that closes and creates a clear in and out.

This isolation from the rest of the city can be traced back from the th

mid 18 century, when graveyards 3 were removed out of the city regarding hygienic concerns. It is however untrue to say that graveyards were a Fig. 2. BOUNDARIES DEFINING regular part of the city. Despite being right inside the city fabric, they didn’t in CEMETERIES. Front of the CD cover of The Nightmare before Christmas original many ways belong to it, having a special sanctuary status, and even soundtrack.

sometimes specific laws. Thus, exclusive, illegal markets were held,

Source: Wikipedia. shadowy businesses were sorted out and even love affairs were dealt and

carried out 4 . This fact, even though distancing them from the city, gave graveyards a certain urbanness. The forbidden and the dark could be considered a fundamental part of the city, turning them into places where the hidden becomes possible; citizens are able to keep their secrets fusing in the unconcern of the metropolis, unlike villagers, who are not able to bear a double life.

The definitive dissociation between the graveyard and the city, at least in its most physical meaning, came on May 21, 1763, when the Parliament of Paris ordered all parish cemeteries to be removed from Paris 5 .

3

A cemetery that is placed inside the realm of a city church is called in English a graveyard. According to Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org): “Cemeteries are distinguished from other burial grounds by their location; they are usually not adjoined to a church. A graveyard, on the other hand, is located in a churchyard”. This difference is not usual in other languages, since the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents (Cimetière des Sants Innocents) was placed in a churchyard in 18 th century Paris’ city centre, according to Richard A. ETLIN, The architecture of death. (The MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1987) p. 5.

4

5

Richard A. ETLIN, The architecture of death. (The MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1987) p. 14.

Id, p. 22.

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 3 / 19

Fig. 3. DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES A comparison of sizes and relation to the city (as distance in meters to nearest residential areas.)

Source: Made by the author.

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 4 / 19

The reasons suggested for this uncoupling had of course to do with disease prevention within the city, but it also tried to ban the macabre imagery of the graveyard out of the city, now regarded as impure or improper from an enlightened point of view. At the same time, the strict regulation stood as a clear defiance of the early public authorities towards the all­powerful Church.

This new spaces were carefully designed by the revolutionary neoclassical architects as a real statement of principles. They embodied the Christian contention and humility in opposition to the morbid, growingly pagan view of death inside the city graveyards. These flat cemeteries had almost no vegetation, except for slender cypresses, which made the flat, empty landscape even more hostile. Outside the city, cemeteries could become perfect, abstract spaces, secluded from the outer world, again defining their Fig. 4. ERASURE OF THE CEMETERY prevailing boundaries.

FROM THE CITY. The site of the Cimetière des Sants Innocents around th This departure from the city did not last forever, as many 19 1780 and now, completely disappeared.

century cemeteries were gradually swallowed by the latter urban growth. A

Source: Richard A. ETLIN, The architecture of death. (The MIT Press, cemetery like Kleverlaan stands in the middle of nowadays’ Haarlem city Cambridge MA, 1987) p. 9 and Google Earth. fabric as a great green space in the middle of a residential neighborhood,

challenging all the hygienic reasons that once kicked it out. This does not mean however that their separation from the city concluded, since they became enclosed singular spaces within it. Their boundaries took thus an important role, ensuring this separation and actively defining these spaces, taking the appearance of naked, unbreakable walls, like those surrounding Crooswijk cemetery in Rotterdam, or that of a more romantic high metal fence with sharp rusty spikes. However the austere fence that encloses Kleverlaan cemetery is not particularly high or prominent, yet the site sets its own boundaries in a more sophisticated way. By subtly raising the grave areas above the street level, they become delicately detached from the city, in a different level. Besides this, there is an aim to set a physical width of separation between the street and the cemetery. Near the main entrance is where this width is more apparent, in the shape of a strip of lawn, about 15 meters wide. This urban separator actively sets a tangible boundary between the land of the dead from that of the living. Actually, it goes along the entire complex acting in its narrower parts as a quite literal double barrier. A thick row of vegetation goes along with it, creating a required visual barrier, setting a kind of drawn curtain between the two. As a result, Kleverlaan cemetery does not actually touch the city, setting its boundaries, perhaps in a more subtle way than other cemeteries, but not less effective, When we look at more modern examples, boundaries are in fact still there, even though they might take a less obvious, somewhat wittier

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 5 / 19

materialization. In the Cemeteri Nou at Igualada, walls or fences are skillfully elapsed from the design process by actually burying the cemetery, making the topography work as a natural fence. One of the main aims of the architects Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós was to create a cemetery opposite to the traditional Spanish one, which is firmly defined by a wall that 6

7

encloses it and its vegetation . We face a real ‘burial of the cemetery ’, making the niches excavated tombs, allowing a contact between the world of the living and the death. The cemetery at Igualada has hence ambiguous condition of a space that has a mimic relation with the site, but at the same time creates a different reality, again stressing this ‘heterotopian 8 ’ quality of a powerful establishment of an inside and an outside. Therefore, Igualada cemetery develops quite the same physical boundaries, even though there is an effort to provide a different formal solution. There is a clear intention of creating a space detached from the rest of the world, a space that, as the 9

architects proudly put it, works like a place .

The concept of a boundary is hence recurrent when we think of a cemetery, as a guarantee of the preservation of the natural order: people not getting in when not expected and, not less important, dead people inside cemeteries not getting out. This building of an independent place is something that lays beneath the idea of cemeteries, not only as a physical boundary, but also as a change of behavior of their visitors, an unwritten set Fig. 5. URBAN SEPARATOR. Sections of of house rules. It goes as far as creating one of the few urban spaces that Kleeverlan cemetery.

still holds a strict dress code. This cemeteries’ etiquette, which is more or Source: Made by the author.

less constant in most European countries, is always related to a notion of respect to the ones who are mourning and discomfort about the idea of a contact with death. All these boundaries that are set could be considered as an actual materialization of a prohibition; in fact most penal codes stress the seriousness of grave violation or illegal body exhumation. This legal emphasis, shows the condition of death as a social taboo, and resembles

6 Anatxu ZABALBEASCOA, Igualada Cemetery.

Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós. (Phaidon, London,

1996) p 16.

7 Ibid.

8 ‘Heterotopias’, as defined by the French philosopher Michel FOUCALT are “real places (…) which are

something like counter­sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all ther real sites (…) are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality.” Michel FOUCALT, Of other spaces. From Other Spaces, the affair of heteropia. Roland RITTER and Bernd KNALLER­VLAY, Ed. (Haus der Architektur, Graz, 1998) p 26.

9 Enric MIRALLES and Carme PINÓS,

Madrid 2002, p 70.

from El Croquis : Enric Miralles 1983­2000. Omnibus volume,

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 6 / 19

the former strong legislation on sex­related crimes, the other great Western taboo. This strictness, this enhanced awareness, noticeable in both topics, displays a very artificial or exaggerated approach to these taboos, which has somewhat evolved with the years; prostitution, adultery or homosexuality were serious felonies in most countries some years ago, but now they have decriminalized, according to moral or social changes. However, the taboos associated with death seem to be immovable, and a definite, specific space is needed as well for them to become visible. Cemeteries stand as carefully designed spaces where mourners can carry out an intricate illusion of how Fig. 6 EXTREME BOUNDARIES. San Michele Cemetery in Venice, a radical example of isolation.

Source: Wikipedia.

death should be. Taking temporarily hold of the cemetery, they describe an unreal place in which they are able to forget and deny everything that stands out of its boundaries.

AT THE END OF THE PATH, WALKWAYS GENERATING CEMETERIES. FROM THE PROMENADE TO THE PROCESSION. th

With the coming of the 19 century, the enlightened designs of perfect, empty cemeteries quickly became cold and harsh, and a new kind of picturesque­landscaped cemetery appeared, taking the shape of the English gardens. Another main element of the cemetery, the path, made its powerful reappearance as a central design tool. The idea of a path is present in funerary architecture from the intricate galleries of the ancient mausoleums, th

but in the 19 century garden cemeteries it became an open path walk, which invited to a more enjoyable approach to death, innocent and almost recreational, as in a park. In this new vision, death was seen more as a 10

peaceful “eternal sleep or rest ”, as an opposition to the Christian travel Fig. 7 OVERRIDDEN BY THE RATIONAL. Cemetery in Paris (François Perard de Montreuil, 1775­1776). The bare, empty cemetery designs of the mid­end 19 th century soon were regarded as too cold.

The path became again an important issue to produce an English garden style landscape.

between two worlds. This turned the cemetery into a pleasing ground of

Source: Richard A. ETLIN, The architecture of death. (The MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1987) p. 71.

latter influence of English Romanticism, as a revolt against excessive

vegetation and its main symbol, the gravestone, into a natural element of a serene, slightly sedative Arcadian landscape, perhaps one of the few truly positive visions of death in Western civilization.

11

In this journey from the sublime to the picturesque , there was a

rationalization of life and arts. New cemeteries begin to draw attention

10 Ken WORPOLE,

Last landscapes. The architecture of the cemetery in the West. (Reaktion books, London, 2003) p 90.

11 I shall use in this essay the concepts of

sublime and picturesque to refer to the classical aesthetic qualities as defined by Burke (Edmund BURKE, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. London, 1958). Sublime is here the quality of reaching emotions through the great, the vast the harsh, and picturesque as a counter­concept, to refer to the aesthetic qualities idealized, pleasant nature. However, further on, I also understand the macabre, the peculiar, and the kitsch as exaggerations of the picturesque.

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 7 / 19

because they are shady, uncontrolled and mysterious, and therefore become places that bear secrets, places of connection to the supernatural.

In fact it is in this moment in time where cemeteries appear again greatly in literature, as an expression of human unbearable loneliness in gothic fiction.

The image of the ruin and the decay are valued in this new fictional space, where tombs bear unspeakable enigmas and “(…) the abandon into which 12

they fall helps define their age, since they are from another era. ” In a cemetery like Kleverlaan’s, the walking path through the graves actually shapes the spatial organization. The very basic layout of cemeteries works as a combination of walk able land (paths) which give access to another restricted land plots (tombs). These aren’t physically closed, as the cemetery itself is; their boundaries are namely cultural, like an actual extrusion of the tomb plan, thus stepping on them would be considered disrespectful, or simply wrong. These forbidden areas are normally marked with a lawn edging of about 20 centimeters, a stress on this no trespassing line.

While some main roads in Kleverlaan stay as powerful, straight axes, most of the plan is structured in an English garden landscape fashion, with wandering, sinuous walkways. There is also a newer part which tries to build a more abstract composition with circles and ovals which bring back to mind the neoclassical approaches. The contrast between the organic forms and the rigid module of the tomb creates a shifting pattern, creating views in which the tombstones overlap with different orientations amongst the vegetation, in a decidedly Arcadian composition. This continuous path which tours over the whole cemetery always ranges from the 2 to the 2.5 meters, stating a dimension definitely not monumental, building perhaps a path to be walked alone. It is also remarkable the use of dead ends, or the cul­de­sacs as a warranty of the maintenance of the privacy of the burial areas. There is also a ruling hierarchy in these roads that move from the more public axes to the private grave: a transition from the social to the personal, from the city to the tomb. Therefore as we walk this journey, we part from the coldness of the pavement course, pass through the gravel walkways were our footsteps and our march become audibly present and arrive to the final softness of a thick lawn carpet, a carpet which defines a reverential zone, an area to be stepped in only in special occasions.

12

Pedro AZARA, The House and the Dead (On modern tombs). From La última casa/ The last house Mónica GILI, Ed. (Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1999), p 7.

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 8 / 19

The path is another of the main pillars in the design of Igualada cemetery, where the picturesque has slipped away to create a very powerful zigzagging route. This does distance the cemetery at Igualada from the idea 13

of a recreational park and brings about the rituals of Christian burials ; the path to be walked as a procession. In fact, the whole design and 14

construction elements “relate directly to human movement ”. This procession, like an up­to­date Orpheus’ descend to the underworld, is paced 15

“by the hearse and the funeral procession on foot ”. We can see here a renewal of the classical cemetery structure, a refusal to the intricate, narrow cemetery paths to build a Haussmanian major boulevard which opens a public dimension, the building of a modern city of the death, where the car can make its entrance. This road, as we can see in the site plan, is an actual dead end. This also emphasizes the eschatological Christian view of time: like a road which has a start and an end and actually leads somewhere.

However, the zigzagging of Igualada or the curves and wanderings of Kleverlaan pathways, don’t completely elude the terrible thought of actually leading to their final destination; of being a one way ticket.

DEATH AND THE WORLD OF THE ‘AS IF’ 16 .

METAPHORES AS EUPHEMISMS. SHAPING TABOOES. Every chapter of Six feet under, the acclaimed American TV drama about a family that owns a funeral business opens with a death scene. In one of them 17 , we see an aged couple in bed; it’s early in the morning. The husband wakes up, talks to his wife – with no response. He begins then to shake her in order to wake her up, but suddenly stops and violently pulls out his hands – he realizes she is dead. As an unconscious response, the man takes his hands off his deceased wife. We could see here the idea of death as something contagious, or perhaps the sudden idea of actually having

13

Willian CURTIS, Mental maps and social landscape. From El Croquis : Enric Miralles 1983­2000.

Omnibus volume, Madrid 2002, p 16.

14

Anatxu ZABALBEASCOA, Igualada Cemetery. Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós. (Phaidon,

London, 1996.), p 15.

15 Willian CURTIS, Mental maps and social landscape. From El Croquis

: Enric Miralles 1983­2000.

Omnibus volume, Madrid 2002, p 16.

16 Term extracted from an essay by Spanish critic Pedro AZARA:

“Just as in ancient art, we enter the

world of the ‘as if’, the region of metaphors.” Pedro AZARA, The House and the Dead (On modern tombs). From La última casa/ The last house Mónica GILI, Ed. (Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1999), p 15.

17 The room,

ch. 6, season 1 Six feet under.

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 9 / 19

trigged death. It was alright to touch her before, but not anymore after she is dead.

When coping with the issue of death, most of the cultural representations show this discomfort bringing about a series of metaphors; there is a necessity to “employ bridges which evoke the fatal and final 18

step. ” This again emphasizes the distance taken from the present­day individual towards death, the creation of euphemisms as bridges become greater than the concepts they were about to bridge. This 20 th century denial of death has probably to do with medical improvements, which made domestic death a less common issue, but also with a rise of secularism, and the millions of losses in the World Wars, which dragged an uncomfortable 19

silence upon the topic .

As a consequence, many examples of modern cemetery show a lack of functionalism, really remarkable when compared to the changes other th

buildings experimented in the 20 century. The architecture is incapable of showing the function it satisfies simply because modern standards regard these functions as improper. It is surprising to realize how little do we know about the procedures of dead bodies treatment and disposal, considering this topic not as the basic necessity that it is, but as a “morbid spectacle, 20

which does not transcend reality. ” As a result, cemeteries have always manifested the taboo they bear as a negation of their function. Even Adolf Loos, the father of Functionalism, refuted the utility of the cemetery by 21

stating that tombs belonged to art.

This marginalization of cemeteries from

other building tipologies when facing the new contemporary styles is tangible in Vienna, where “(…) a dramatic illustration of the difference between the heterotopias of the hospital and the cemetery can be seen (…). While the graves at the vast nineteenth­century Zentralfriedhof are bursting with excessive and

18

Pedro AZARA, The House and the Dead (On modern tombs). From La última casa/ The last house Mónica GILI, Ed. (Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1999), p 16.

19 According to

Gareth GARDNER, Death becomes us. Blueprint, May 2004. p 64.

20

Pedro AZARA, The House and the Dead (On modern tombs). From La última casa/ The last house Mónica GILI, Ed. (Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1999), p 12.

21 “(...) only a small part of architecture belongs to art: the tomb and the monument. Everything else that

fulfills a function is to be excluded from the domain of art.” Adolf LOOS, Architecktur. (Verlag Herold, Wien, 1962) From Other Spaces, the affair of heteropia. Roland RITTER and Bernd KNALLER­VLAY, Ed. (Haus der Architektur, Graz, 1998) p 130.

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 10 / 19

incoherent ornamentation, the stark façades of the Allgemeine Krankenhaus anticipate modern Puritanism. 22 ”

Therefore, when we visit most nowadays cemeteries, like Kleverlaan, we find that the design of modern headstones is anything but inventive. Use of long­lasting materials like granite, or letters carved in gold, symmetrical compositions, the choice of polished or shiny surfaces, classical Fig. 8 CEMETERIES AND THE KITSCH. View of a Mexican cemetery during the day of the dead. The picturesque in cemeteries brings about an exaggeration and excess that makes it deal with the kitsch.

styled motives – everything seems to evoke the principle of endurance or perpetuity. These tombs will be, however, replaced by other ones when the cemetery contract ends, showing again the leaks of this world of the ‘as if’, a kind of suspended and assumed illusion. A great deal of our clumsiness

Source: www.trinity.edu

when knowing how to use tombs might come from the actual fact that they are forms void of use. This lack of functional properties can be traced back to the very first manifestations of funeral architecture, where things that were not functional during lifetime could be used in the next world. Thus, graves have carefully carved hinges on stone that are never to be opened, that work as a counterfeit of reality. The clearest expression of this uselessness lays in Aldo Rossi’s conception of the San Cataldo cemetery, building a construction that maintains its formal condition but leaves out all “the pieces 23

and parts which would allow them to be useful and practical ” – in other words, building a house that is dead. th

James Stevens Curl states however that in the 19

century

cemeteries had a much more direct approach towards death and its details.

In this times, “(…) Principles were laid down for proper disposal of the dead, 24

without sentiment, and as a purely functional, like drains or water supply.

(…) The Victorians were functionalists in their disposals of their dead 25 .” It seems however that the Modern Movement had some troubles assimilating the issue of death. In most contemporary approaches, metaphors and abstract intentions tend to diminish the actual design. Woodland cemetery,

by Erik Gunar Asplund was conceived as a landscape of nature as a metaphor for rebirth, an attempt to fuse “art with nature, death with life. The immediacy of religious experience sought by Martin Luther during the sixteenth century was replaced by the modernist ambition of attaining

22 Kari JORMAKKA,

Post Mortem Eclecticism. From Other Spaces, the affair of heteropia. Roland RITTER and Bernd KNALLER­VLAY, Ed. (Haus der Architektur, Graz, 1998) p 144.

23

Rafael MONEO, Aldo Rossi: The idea of architecture and the Modena cemetery. From Oppositions, K. Michael HAYS ed. (Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1998), p 105.

24 James Stevens CURL, The Victorian celebration of death.

25 Id, p 187.

(Davis&Charles, London, 1972), p 182.

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 11 / 19

26

unmediated experience per se ”. However, this new environment repeatedly echoes the traditional cemetery approach, its ambitions partly become pretentious because of its blown up quest for the transcendental. There is always a concern about general, larger­than­life issues, whereas the materiality is largely forgotten.

When we look at the last examples of cemeteries, like in Igualada’s 27

case, there is a clear vocation of being real, of creating a physical ‘gravitas ’ in which the mystery comes directly from the material, not as an added quality. The niche burial system allows the architect to achieve a more abstract shape that eludes the gravestone element, which would have instantly linked it with the cemetery imagery. As in César Portela’s cemetery in Finisterra, architecture of death is showed as something mysterious, as a series of abstract concrete boxes that again, fail to represent the function th

they assume. There is, perhaps, a certain purpose in the 20 century of building cemeteries that don’t look like cemeteries, in providing new formal Fig. 9 THE FOG OF THE ABSTRACT. View of Cesar Portela’s cemetery in Finisterra (Spain). Modern design of cemeteries seems to build cemeteries that don’t look like cemeteries, giving them an abstract, functionless look.

approaches but not exploring the real essence of cemeteries as an urban reality. Again we find the rejection of death as an open topic, a certain repel towards the physical fact of death, its awkward untidiness. Quoting Bernard 28

Tschumi, “death is tolerated only when the bones are white ”, only when we have got the skeletons are we able look at them with enough coldness, able

Source: www.vitruvius.com

to place them in a natural history museum. In the meanwhile, our natural reaction is to quickly pull out our hands, like the unexpected widowed, trying not to touch what we are not supposed to.

GRAVE VERSUS CEMETERY. INDIVIDUALITY VERSUS REPETITION. DEATH MEETS MASS CULTURE. Cemeteries have always dealt with a dual nature, embracing often opposite concepts within their realm. Places that stand in earth to represent heavens, where the livings meet the dead, real spaces that are dutifully built to enhance their unreality. Tombs their selves always express an opposition between the horizontal (rest) and the vertical (rebirth) 29 . But perhaps the

26 Caroline CONSTANT, The Woodland

Cemetery: Toward a Spiritual Landscape. (Byggförlaget,

Stockholm, 1994) p 133.

27

Willian CURTIS, Mental maps and social landscape. From El Croquis : Enric Miralles 1983­2000.

Omnibus volume, Madrid 2002, p 18.

28

Bernard TSCHUMI, Architecture and transgression. From Oppositions, K. Michael HAYS ed.

(Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1998), p 359.

29

Pedro AZARA, The House and the Dead (On modern tombs). From La última casa/ The last house Mónica GILI, Ed. (Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1999), p 4.

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 12 / 19

most powerful conflict that cemeteries embody is the gap between the personal experience of death and the social ceremonies and rituals related, stating as a link between the individual and the public.

In a classic cemetery like Kleverlaan, the tension between the individual and the collective is a part of their recognizable landscape. The tomb module is pretty much regular throughout the cemetery, but each grave is different (chosen) for every different buried person, they even have a name written on them to recall that they stand for an individual. It’s interesting to remark, however, that this feeling of repetition is much more impressive and less picturesque when the repeated elements are not so different from each other, as it is highlighted in the Jewish section at Kleverlaan, This abstract landscape of the anonymous grave has possibly its peak point at the Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

In Kleverlaan the different tombstones, as manufactured objects, give nature a certain human scale. In Igualada, the niche burial system makes these disparities much smaller; the graves now form only one entity, a wall. We have lost the picturesque variety of Kleverlaan and the human scale provided, but also we have lost the dimension of the human body that was so present in horizontal tombs, as a reminder of their actual reason of being. Again, contemporary design slips away from function into an abstract mascara of death. But it is not only in the tombs where we have lost the Fig. 10 INTERIORS AS EXTERIORS. View of Kleverlaan and Igualada’s cemeteries. Both cemeteries compared in this essay are a simulacrum of a urban public space, Kleverlaan resembles a park and Igualada has the quality of a street.

However, in our journey from Kleverlaan to Igualada, despite of gaining some interesting contemporary views over the issue of death, we have also suffered some losses; first of all the loss of the nearness to the city, the loss of the intimate space of the park path being transformed into the publicness of the street and the loss of the reference to the body and its dimension, which in Igualada has been replaced by an abstract wall.

individual, but also in the general layout, which stresses the similarity of the

Source: Kleverlaan, de geshiedenid van een begraafplaats, Margreeth POP & Jaap TEMMINCK, (Schuit & co 2002 HAARLEM) and www.camillaulrikkeholm.dk

a bit disappointing due to technical difficulties, gives an organic, transparent,

30

architecture with a street or a public space , again making a clear approach towards the social meaning of death. However these streets are just simulacrums of streets; they don’t stand anyway near the city, but at the end of an industrial area, they only serve as a city for the dead.

This general transition from the individual to the collective has struck funerary architecture as a whole: while cemeteries have little diffusion, memorials are given mass media coverage. The memorial for the 11­M bombing attack in Madrid has aroused a great expectation, not just around architecture professionals, but also in public opinion. The final result, though

form to the thousands of anonymous support messages that citizens wrote after the attack. It stands proudly in the Atocha Station, right in the city 30

Anatxu ZABALBEASCOA, Igualada Cemetery. Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós. (Phaidon, London, 1996.), p 14.

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 13 / 19

centre, where people will have to see it and deal with the issue of death every day, without the boundaries a cemetery would display. Death is thus, a common topic and issue in mass media and popular culture, but only 31

through the ‘mediating hiperreality of the simulacrum ’.

However new perspectives are possible regarding death, in the halfway between the public and the private, like in the proposal for a new 32

funeral space in Hammersmith, by Popularchitecture . The building is not an isolated big facility, like crematoria tend to, but is located in the ground floor of a city building, right into the city fabric. The old store window panted in black encloses a bright, white interior in which the coffin is settled, visible from the street. This contrasts with nowadays funeral facilities, which tend to have pretty anodyne designs, and in which the coffin is actually hidden by 33

curtains or under the floor . The facades are covered with flower holders Fig. 11. DEATH TROUGH EXCESS. Hammersmith funeral parlour and which make the building a kind of massive funeral flower bloom in the city.

Buckingham Palace after the death of Lady Also with their Sky Cemetery, NL Architects have infected, in their own Diana of Wales.

34

worlds, “the last cultural field not to be explored by postmodernism ”. The Source: www.hola.com; www.popularchitecture.com. proposal for a multilevel graveyard, as an economical experiment also to

“the possibilities of the accumulating benefits of a super large cemetery 35 ” is an insurrection against the classical field of rest cemeteries, but also a witty attempt to bring the cemetery into Capitalist society. The skyscraper­ cemetery is located an undefined setting (probably the same city outskirts in which Miralles’ lays), as a giant 25 level white alabaster cross. The image of the Venturian duck comes to mind when designing a cemetery that is in fact a giant tomb like an oversized death logo. This project shows a very different, honest approach to death, building a sublime postmodern landscape in the periphery of the city, where the city wants it to be, but sticks out and creates its new urban identity and shows its uncomforting presence.

Fig. 12. MASSIVE TOMB. Sky architecture by NL architects. To be buried “halfway to heaven” Source: OPOP, Operative Optimism in Architecture. (Actar, Barcelona, 2005), section 4.

31 Victor BURGIN

Paranoiac Space. From Other Spaces, the affair of heteropia. Roland RITTER and Bernd KNALLER­VLAY, Ed. (Haus der Architektur, Graz, 1998) p 50.

32

33

Included in Gareth GARDNER, Death becomes us. Blueprint, May 2004. p 68.

James Stevens CURL, The Victorian celebration of death. (Davis&Charles, London, 1972), p 186.

34 NL ARCHITECTS for Sky Cemetery. From OPOP, Operative Optimism in Architecture. (Actar,

Barcelona, 2005).

35

Daniele MANCINI. Interview with NL Architects. May 2003­January 2004, Spazio Architettura magazine.

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 14 / 19

MATERIALIZATIONS OF DEATH. DANGLING BETWEEN THE PICTURESQUE AND THE SUBLIME. As we have seen, the idea of death swirls throughout time between the idea of the sublime and the picturesque. It is sublime when we think of the timeless abstract shapes of the Egyptian pyramids, but also in the inhuman perfection of the Newton’s Cenotaph or in the sharp teeth of Damien Hirst tiger shark, which embodies “The physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone.” Igualada cemetery also exploits a sublime imagery, providing big scale and fades out the individual in favor of a more material, impersonal landscape. Kleverlaan’s approach has more to do with the English picturesque paintings, with an image of an idealized nature in Fig. 13. THE JAWS OF DEATH. Damien Hirst stated when preparing this piece he which the gravestone becomes a part of an Arcadian romantic landscape. wanted something “big enough to eat you”.

However part of this picturesque could also be assimilated in the morbid Barber, Lynn "Bleeding art", The Observer, 20 April 2003 taste for the awkward, the pleasure of being scared while reading gothic Source: www.fotolog.com/arto. literature, and the mise en scène of the broadcasted death. Both,

picturesque and sublime, express a mask over the issue of death, the two faces of the same taboo.

This tension between the two forces is very eloquent of the moment we are living now, trapped between a bombing of the others’ death through mass media and a lack of experience in first­hand death, which modern society actively denies. Thus we managed to discuss and produce architectural responses for the collective death with a passion and openness that is missed in cemeteries design. We may take as an example Boulée’s Cenotaph for Newton that was so massive that, as Azara sarcastically points 36

out “rivaled any universe the English mathematician might reveal .”

Cemeteries, apart for being banned outside the city, don’t seem to overgrow the corset of social rules that society has imposed.

The set of cultural restrictions that accompany the cemetery as an expression of an inherited decorum are however not universal. In some 37

Northern Europe cities cemeteries are used as public spaces or parks , which would elsewhere seem totally inappropriate. This different conception of burial spaces is not restricted to a single region, which could have another

36

Pedro AZARA, The House and the Dead (On modern tombs). From La última casa/ The last house Mónica GILI, Ed. (Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1999), p 7.

37

“In east London some of the cemeteries function as open spaces for recreation although burials continue.” James Stevens CURL The Victorian celebration of death.

(Davis&Charles, London, 1972), p 182.

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 15 / 19

Fig. 14. DANGLING BETWEEN THE PICTURESQUE AND THE SUBLIME. The graphic tries to build a mental map of the different representations of death throughout time.

Source: Made by the author.

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 16 / 19

cultural view on death, but rather seems to be a kind of practical approach or rationalization of the cemeteries; cemeteries seen as recreational spaces, which can be used by citizens without actively perturbing other citizen’s mourn. Further examples of the defiance of the cemeteries etiquette can be seen when we move tombs to other spaces. While stepping on tombs is an unthinkable act in most cemeteries, in old Catholic churches is not seen as something disrespectful. In fact, cemeteries act as actual condensers of death taboos.

When comparing death with the other great Western taboo par excellance, sex, we find some curious situations. Like sex, death has some post modern erratic – considered indecent by society – social approaches and uses; we could talk about black tourism, cemetery stalking as part of the gothic subculture or simply about the morbid use of death in mass media.

Having so many moral and religious implications, death has become an untouchable and somewhat unnatural topic. Therefore, in the same way as pornography could be seen as an overstated, unreal view of sexuality, made by years of constant repression, cemeteries have so many connotations that they cannot give a clear image of death.

Fig. 15. DEATH AS PROVOCATION. Stills form music video “El cementerio de mis sueños”, by Fangoria. Extremely violent movies, mainstreaming of the gothic urban tribe… Mass culture flirts with the idea of death in a very provocative way, which reminds of the way it dealt with sex, the other great Western taboo par excellance. In the music video for her last single, “El cementerio de mis sueños” (The cemetery of my dreams), Spanish star singer Alaska, who was a precursor of the goth fashion in the eighties, known for her provocative ways, performs with her group in a challenging setting: a cemetery.

In my opinion, what is lacking in most modern designs for cemeteries is a careful analysis and value of this pack of rules and the way it relates to the city and to the citizens. Miralles’ formal design is incredibly interesting, and provides a new contemporary materialization of death.

However, the architects’ intention of “creating a park where the living can 38

also stay ” i s hard to satisfy when the cemetery is placed in the end of an anonymous industrial road; when the design of cemeteries is not considered as a part of the design of the cities.

Cemeteries have always had some sort of cultural restrictions,

Source: www.youtube.com

which made them undesired places. The over­rely in monumentalization as 39

an undemanding mean of memory­holding tends to make them uncanny , yet a more careful look may bring back their human and emotional dimension. The disorder and ugliness of the gravestones, their kitsch embodiment of human mourn have been taken by contemporary architects

38

Anatxu ZABALBEASCOA, Igualada Cemetery. Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós. (Phaidon, London, 1996.), p 18.

39

“(…) monuments might be unheimlich or uncanny: the disturbing or worrying are themselves amongst the qualities that might be considered monumental.” Ken WORPOLE, Last landscapes. The architecture of the cemetery in the West. (Reaktion books, London, 2003) p 195.

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 17 / 19

in latex gloves and placed in sterile or absent spaces. Modernity refutes death and aging, as it does with everything it cannot control; we are not able to cope with them because “they are a reflection of our finite nature 40 ”. It is hard to address to the issue of death because its condition stands as a negation, an object that, as we stare harder, we find out that “there is 41

nothing to see ”. This ‘vacuum of death’ creates empty or negative spaces, of a heterotopian condition, quite as “the imprint that is created when a body 42

is removed, the shape a person impresses on a bed. ” This void was filled with a set of values and qualities in the past, but that is hard to maintain in an ‘non­Heroic age 43 ’.

When thinking about the women in “Volver” 44 , which clean with soap Fig. 16. DOMESTIC CEMETERIES. Still from “Volver”. ““It is a movie about the culture of death in La Mancha, where I was born. My people live it with a marvelous ordinariness. They way the dead remain present in their lives, the richness and humanity of their rites is what makes the dead never die.” Pedro ALMODÓVAR on his personal webpage. Translated by author.

and sponges their loved ones’ tomb stones, the same way they would clean their kitchen tiles, we miss the domestic dimension of the cemetery depicted.

45

We lack their presence at Igualada to balance its transcendence, finding a balance between the picturesque and the sublime. Thus it would be able to come back to life; it would allow us to feel the vacuum landscape. It would be rescued from the insignificance that death is handled in our society, reduced to the suburban life trivial 46 . “We ought to honor the dead. Not so much for 47

Source: lamimia.blogia.com. them, but for us. ”

40

Pedro AZARA, The House and the Dead (On modern tombs). From La última casa/ The last house Mónica GILI, Ed. (Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1999), p 12.

41 Catherine MERRIDALE,

Ivan's War, the Red Army 1939­194. From Ken WORPOLE, Last

landscapes. The architecture of the cemetery in the West. (Reaktion books, London, 2003) p 198.

42

Pedro AZARA, The House and the Dead (On modern tombs). From La última casa/ The last house Mónica GILI, Ed. (Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1999), p 13.

43

Ken WORPOLE, Last landscapes. The architecture of the cemetery in the West. (Reaktion books, London, 2003) p 177.

44

Pedro ALMODÓVAR, Volver, 2006.

45 In fact the cemetery of Igualada was a set to one of the previous films of Almodóvar,

All about my mother (1999), where it made the final revelation about the transsexual Lola, the mysterious character the movie turns around. “The apparition [of Lola], for that is what it is, [has] a strange morbid beauty, that unpleasantly brings to mind the count Dracula: she is the evil mediator of death.” Guillermo CABRERA INFANTE, El País, May 16th 1999, from: www.clubcultura.com/clubcine/clubcineastas/almodovar. Translation by the author.

46

James Stevens CURL The Victorian celebration of death. (Davis&Charles, London, 1972), p 185.

47 Rafael ARGULLOL, El cazador de instants. Cuaderno de Travesía 1990­1995. (Destino, Barcelona,

1996). From La última casa/ The last house Mónica GILI, Ed. (Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1999), p i.

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 18 / 19

BIBLIOGRAPHY Richard A. ETLIN, The architecture of death. (The MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1987) Caroline CONSTANT, The Woodland Cemetery: Toward a Spiritual Landscape.

(Byggförlaget, Stockholm, 1994.)

Pedro AZARA, The House and the Dead (On modern tombs). From La última casa/ The last house Mónica GILI, Ed. (Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1999) Ken WORPOLE, Last landscapes. The architecture of the cemetery in the West. (Reaktion books, London, 2003) Kenneth T JACKSON & Camilo José VERGARA, Silent cities. The evolution of the American cemetery. (Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1989) James Stevens CURL, A celebration of death. (Constable, London, 1980) Howard COLVIN, Architecture and the after­life. (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1991) Aaron BETSKY, Building sex. (William Morrow & Co. INC, New York, 1995) Michel FOUCALT, Of other spaces. From Other Spaces, the affair of heteropia. Roland RITTER and Bernd KNALLER­VLAY, Ed. (Haus der Architektur, Graz, 1998).

Kari JORMAKKA, Post Mortem Eclecticism. From Other Spaces, the affair of heteropia.

Roland RITTER and Bernd KNALLER­VLAY, Ed. (Haus der Architektur, Graz, 1998).

Hilde HEYNSEN, Patterns of displacement. From the Journal of Architectural Education, Sept 1998, pp 2­29.

Bernard TSCHUMI, Architecture and transgression. From Oppositions, K. Michael HAYS ed.

(Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1998).

Rafael MONEO, Aldo Rossi: The idea of architecture and the Modena cemetery. From Oppositions, K. Michael HAYS ed. (Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1998), p 105.

Stuart WREDE, The architecture of Enrik Gunnar Asplund. (The MIT Press, Cambridge MA and London, 1980) C. J. HUGHES, Victims of terrorist attacks memorialized. Architectural Record, July 2007, p 34.

Gareth GARDNER, Death becomes us. Blueprint, May 2004. pp. 64­70.

Anatxu ZABALBEASCOA, Igualada Cemetery. Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós. (Phaidon, London, 1996.)

BUILDING DEATH, Carlos GARCÍA­SANCHO 19 / 19

Willian CURTIS, Mental maps and social landscape. From El Croquis : Enric Miralles 1983­ 2000. Omnibus volume, Madrid 2002.

VV AA, OPOP, Operative Optimism in Architecture. (Actar, Barcelona, 2005) James Stevens CURL, The Victorian celebration of death. (Davis&Charles, London, 1972)

ONLINE BIOGRAPHY George WALD, The origin of death.

Luis Diego QUIRÓS, Enric Miralles: Architecture of time.

Gregory J ROSMAITA, Resting in Peace.