The burial landscape in the contemporary metropolis

Concrete, cold marble, fake flowers with neon-like colors. This is often how we perceive cemeteries in Italy, overcrowded condominiums resembling lifeless cities. We are living in a historical moment of existential – and climatic crisis where the need for places of remembrance is growing, as well as the need to rethink the spaces of death to answer a multicultural society. From this point of view, institutions in Italy are stuck in a nineteenth-century conception of cemeteries, old and obsolete, unable to accommodate different rituals and spiritualities due to legislative - and therefore architectural - inability to offer real alternatives. Why are cemeteries only considered as spaces for the dead, and not as places for the living? What is the reason behind the repatriation of the bodies? Why haven’t cemeteries evolved with the city and its citizens? Where does spirituality come from and why do we need it? Is it possible to give a design response to the contemporary need for places of spirituality? Is it possible to design spaces that can help a healthy separation from the loved ones? This book aims to investigate these questions, observing the old and new dynamics that revolve around the theme of death, the treatment of the body, the business around the funeral rites, the places of death, and finally the symbolic and psychological meaning of the final key moment in a person’s life. Death is still a central moment of reflection in life, a matter that institutions cannot hide and forget. Being aware that there is no single and universal solution, this book also gives space to a new sensitivity towards the environment, trying to provide not just design answers but highlighting the need for a profound discussion on the need for a greater inclusivity in the spaces of death. A multitude of bodies and cultures that cannot and must not conform to a single and predominant treatment / ritual, and that could finally find their space to express their beliefs. An inclusion that must necessarily go through a review of the practices and methods of treating the bodies. We also wish to bring on a discussion on how individuals with multiple marginalized identities face different access in attaining a good death and use this knowledge to bring equity to end-of-life care and to the spaces of death.