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HofmanDujardin imagines a Funerary Center that offers a contemporary, peaceful space for celebrating the deceased

2018-07-20T16:01:00-04:00

Many funerary homes still around these days typically feel stuffy and gravely outdated, like you suddenly stepped back into a previous century. Based on their personal experiences, architects Michiel Hofman and Barbara Dujardin of the Amsterdam-based firm HofmanDujardin took their own approach to this typology by designing the Contemporary Funerary Center.

According to the architects, the design concept responds to the lack of modernized funerary spaces that bring a sense of ease to the bereaved. Immersed in a lush landscape, the 1,600 m2 building features a calming, pared down aesthetic with wide panoramic windows that bring in ample natural light and views of the surrounding landscape. A sequence of three rooms are shaped around a central area where a coffin can be placed.

Rendering: VEROVisuals.

In the first room, the family, friends, and guests are enclosed by a “memory wall”, a multimedia screen that displays a collage of photos and videos of their loved ...

Prince's ashes interred in a scale model of Paisley Park

2016-10-14T19:14:00-04:00

When Paisley Park opened its doors as a museum last Thursday, many fans were surprised to discover that the late singer’s ashes were on display in an elaborate custom-designed urn co-designed by Prince’s sister Tyka Nelson and nephew President Nelson. Tyka and President teamed up with Foreverence artists to create a scale-model of Paisley Park, measuring 14 inches high and 18 inches long, decorated with Prince’s famous symbol—done in purple, naturally.

The open graves where New York buries its unclaimed bodies

2016-05-23T14:09:00-04:00

Twice a week or so, loaded with bodies boxed in pine, a New York City morgue truck passes through a tall chain-link gate and onto a ferry that has no paying passengers. Its destination is Hart Island, an uninhabited strip of land off the coast of the Bronx in Long Island Sound, where overgrown 19th-century ruins give way to mass graves gouged out by bulldozers and the only pallbearers are jail inmates paid 50 cents an hour. There, divergent life stories come to the same anonymous end.

"New York is unique among American cities in the way it disposes of the dead it considers unclaimed: interment on a lonely island, off-limits to the public, by a crew of inmates. Buried by the score in wide, deep pits, the Hart Island dead seem to vanish — and so does any explanation for how they came to be there."

Be forewarned: it's a pretty grim read. Unclaimed bodies tend to have tragic backstories, providing a portrait of a city that provides few resources to its most vulnerable inhabitants: the mentally ill, homeless, elderly, and impoverished.

"In the face of an end-of-life industry that can drain the resources of the most prudent, these people are especially vulnerable," writes author Nina Bernstein.

For more on spaces devoted to the deceased, check out these links: