Into the Eternity
Rethinking the places for the dead
Into The Enternity Rethinking the places for the dead July 2016
Authors: Ignacio Uribe Gomez Alexandra Krivolapova
Relatore: Stefano Boeri Correlatore: Saverio Pesapane
Index 1
Central Cemetery of Bogotรก 1.1. Project Site 1.2 The Cemetery and City Evolution 1.3 The Cemetery and its Boundaries 1.4 Horizontality and Verticality in the City 1.5 Cemetery Rituals
2
The Cemetery 2.1 Concept 2.2 The System 2.3 Cemetery and the City
1 4
Central Cemetery of Bogotรก
5
1.1.
Project Site
Central Cemetery of Bogotรก (Spanish: Cementerio Central de Bogotรก) is one of the main and most famous cemeteries in Colombia located in Bogotรก. It was opened in 1836 and was declared National Monument in 1984.
6
Cementerio Central, view to Av 26, 1993
7
8
Site Area
1 2
3
4 5
6
1 / German and Jewish cemeteries 2 / Park “Del Renacimiento� 3 / Developing area 4 / Historical cemetery part 5 / British cemetery 6 / Downtown 9
The Cemetery Today
The cemetery is located in the City-Center of Bogotรก. The graves are mainly arranged in tombs (flat structures), columbariums (multilevel structures), which have a mix of linear homogeneous and heterogeneous distribution of graves. All the graves are marked, and this provides a place an ability to protect the individuality. The reasons to visit the graves are mostly private and personal and overtly or inadvertently political. The cemetery is strictly protected by the church and religious believes of people. The temporary nature of the graves is due to the custom to rent the tombs for periods that range between 5 and 10 years. Even though, the cemetery has permanent ones as well that houses national heroes and important figures. The cemetery is public, the plot is owned by the Municipality and serves for the whole community of Bogotรก and as well for the minority burials since it has German, Jewish and British Protestant sections.
10
Located in the CityCenter
Mostly temporary nature of graves
Linear heterogeneous distribution of Tombs
Personal Pilgrimage
Splitted by the city in two parts
Columbariums linear homogeneous distribution
Political Pilgrimage
Owned by secular institution
Multi-level structures
Strictly Protected
Serves to complete Community Burials
Flat Tomb structures
Marked graves
Serves to Minority Burials
Established mixed transparent and blind boundaries
11
Down-town
Neglected ex-cemetery buildings
12
Open space area
Blind fence dividing a historical building and developing area
The developing area of the cemetery is separated from the historical cemetery by a street border by blind fence. The place itself is an open green area with a row of excolumbariums that were constructed in the middle of the 20th century and are currently in a critical state of decay and have to be demolished. 13
14
1.2.
The Cemetery and City Evolution
15
1850
16
Cemetery in the periphery of the city
17
1884
18
Cemetery in the periphery of the city
19
1930
20
Cemetery in the periphery of the city
21
1950
22
Cemetery got overtaken by the urban sprawl
23
1970
24
Cemetery turned in the Central Cemetery of the City
25
2000
26
Cemetery is in the City-Center nearby the Down Town
27
Main Important facts in the history of the Cemetery 1791 After the prohibition of burials inside the churches in 1787, the construction of the first cemetery starts in the west part of Bogotá. This cemetery was active until the end of XIX century.
1793 Designation of the plot for the poor in the cemetery. 1823
The municipality took into consideration the soldiers of the British legion and
assigned a plot for the English residents of the city.
1827 Simon Bolivar signed a decree in order to avoid the burial of bodies in churches, chapels or vaults, and order the construction of the cemeteries outside the towns, which at the time did not have one. In this year the construction of the cemetery of Bogotá took place in a plot besides the one already given to the British men.
1836
The cemetery finally started its official service to the public even though it had
been doing it since 1832. The contour walls were finished as well as 200 or more vaults ready to be used, and the door gate that was in service until the beginning of the XX century.
1839 The chapel was finished (15m long and 9m wide). 1856 The administration of the cemetery passes into the hands of the Catholic church after a long debate in which the problem was economic rather than spiritual, and the cemetery became a religious place of catholic cult.
1920
In the 1920’s, different works were carried out on the cemetery, including the
exterior galleries that surround the ellipse and the main current entrances were built.
1950 Several satellite cemeteries appeared in the north of the city in the decade of the 1950’s, due to a change on the general conception of the ‘death’ for the inhabitants of Bogotá which will be the beginning of the deterioration and abandonment of the Cemetery.
1958 The ellipse of the cemetery is named “the vault cemetery” and the cemetery for the poor was settled in a plot next to it of the extension of one hectare. 28
1984 The Cemetery was declared as a National Monument. 2000 Due to the decay of the Cemetery Ministry of Culture led a program of preservation of the Cemetery. The realization of the Parque Renacimiento and the demolition of two of the columbariums.
29
1.3.
Horizontality and Verticality in the City
30
31
Down-town buildings
32
Mountains
Dividing
Historical
the Cemetery
Cemetery
in two parts street
This sketch shows the horizontality of the cemetery plot. The historical area is presented by the columbariums and the tombs that are around 5 meters tall in contrast with the rising mountains and the developing down-town area of Bogotรก.
33
1.4.
The Cemetery and its Boundaries
Carrera 19
Carrera 19b
Calle 26
Calle 24
Cemetery
34
Cemetery
Carrera 19b
Cemetery
Cemetery
Carrera 19
Calle 26
Cemetery
Calle 24 35
36
37
Transparent and Blind Boundaries The cemetery limits can be perceived as a combination of blind and transparent boundaries. In some parts the limits exceed and transform into shops that serve the cemetery like marble shops, flower sellers and workshops.
Ex-columbariums to be demolished behind the metal fence
The view to the city from the Cemetery through the fence 38
The Cemetery boundaries from the street leading to the central Cemetery Entrance
Street dividing the cemetery into two parts with the shops and workshops serving the Cemetery
Blind Cemetery boundaries inside the developing site area 39
1.5.
Cemetery Rituals “Tour of the Souls”
1
10 6 2 3
4 8
11
5
9
Every Monday people go to the cemetery to do the “Tour of the Souls”. It’s a ritual of tombs visiting to pray for the souls of these who are buried there in order to get some favours from them. Even children participate in this ritual following their parents. 40
7
1 2 3 4 5 6
LA PIEDAD JULIO GARAVITO MARÍA SALOMÉ LEO KOPP HERMANITAS BODMER CARLOS PIZARRO
7 SEPULTUREROS Y ESCALERISTAS 8 CURAS POPULARES 9 ENTIERROS Y BRUJERÍA 10 MARMOLEROS 11 NEGOCIOS CIRCUNDANTES
41
2 42
The Cemetery
43
44
2.1.
Concept
A sense of the sublime
45
“The heterotopia begins to function fully when people are in a kind of absolute break with their traditional time; thus the cemetery is indeed a highly heterotopian place, seeing that the cemetery begins with that strange heterochronia that loss of life constitutes for an individual, and that quasi eternity in which he perpetually dissolves and fades away.” Foucault, “Different Spaces”, 1998
The cemetery is not just a place where people get buried. According to Foucalt the cemetery is a “highly heterotopian” site in its enclosure of “temporal discontinuities”, which implies that the cemetery works as a device capable to break the continuity of time of the living and displays the temporary nature of the matter and the eternal nature of the soul. To emphasize the heterotopian nature of the cemeteries this project seeks to evoke a sense of sublime proclaiming the importance of cemeteries referring to a single individual. That is to say that the architecture is so enormous that it negates the scale of a human being. As well the cemetery acts as a historical record and could be seen as a museum of the dead, that keeps in memory history, chronology and biography of the community to which the cemetery belongs to. This is represented in a vertical continuation of space shaping the gallery of the dead.
46
47
2.2.
The System
4
3
2
1 0
48
4
3
2
1
0
49
50
Ceremony Hall
Cemetery
Funeral home Technical area (body treatment) Underground Cemetery
51
Underground cemetery level
3
2
1
3
1. Visitors elevators 2. Technical vertical access 3. Cemetery vaults
52
Technical level
4
3
6
5
11
7
9 11
10
10 2 1 8 6
1. Cold room
7. Furnace room
2. Cleaning and makeup area
8. Control room
3. Hall for receiving coffins
9. Urns deposit
4. Coffin’s storage
10. Changing rooms
5. Car entrance
11. Technical vertical
6. Coolers and accumulators
access 53
Funerary level
6 6
1
6 6
3
1
2
6
4
7 6 5
1.Technical vertical access
5. Rest-rooms
2. Reception
6. Mourning apartment
3. Archive
7. Visitors elevators
4. Visitors Hall
54
Facade detail
25.0
5.0 24.0 7.0 22.0 9.0 20.0 11.0 300.0 18.0 13.0 16.0 15.0 14.0 17.0 13.0 17.0
55
Cemetery level _ layout 1
2 3
1
1. Visitors elevators 2.Technical vertical access 3.Galleries for “family� tombs
56
30.0
30.0
30.0
Facade detail
40
.0
10
.0
1.Concrete block (40cmx25cmx15cm) 2.Concrete block (40cmx10cmx30cm) 3.Litracon block (40cmx10cmx30cm) 4 Reinforcing steel bars and anchor
57
Cemetery level _ layout 2
2
1
1. Visitors elevators 2.Technical vertical access
58
Main grid
Supplemented grid
Possibly filled grid
Possible space configuration
59
60
61
62
63
Multi-faith space _ selected layout
2
4 3
1
1. Visitors elevators 2.Technical vertical access 3. Ceremony hall 4. Storage
64
65
Multi-faith space _ layout 2
4
2
5
5 3
1
1. Visitors elevators 2.Technical vertical access 3. Ceremony hall 4. Storage / Priest room 5. Garden
66
4
Multi-faith space _ layout 3
4
2
4
3
5
1
6
1. Visitors elevators 2.Technical vertical access 3. Ceremony hall 4. Storage / Priest room 5. Waiting area 6. Restrooms
67
Underground Cemetery
Selected Layout
68
Layout 1
Layout 2
Layout 3
69
70
71
Cemetery in the Night
Litracon - translucent concrete Form: prefabricated blocks Ingredients: optical fibre (glass), concrete
72
73
74
2.3.
Cemetery and the City Discovering different relationships between the Cemetery and the City
Skirting and Integrated Cemeteries
75
76
The District 77
78
The City entering into the Cemetery site
79
80
The Cemetery surrounded by the City
81
82
City Park 83
84
Landscape as a continuity of the rhythm of existent Tombs Formal Landscape Organization
85
86
View to the Down-Town from the Cemetery
87
88
89
90
The Forest 91
92
The Forest Sublime Landscape Organization
93
94
The Cemetery as an escape from the City
95
96
97
98
Skirting Cemetery
99
100
101