Death By Design

Allison Meier takes note of a competition for designers to reimagine “the architecture of death”:

What happens when you die? Well, in a literal way, what happens to everyone else. You’re likely to have a traditional, costly, funeral, and then a small slot of land in a quiet sprawl of cemetery will be yours.  Yet this traditional way of death is arguably both a waste of land and money, and perhaps worse, practically begs for a person to be forgotten among the waves of tombstones that become less and less visited as the years tick by from that final date on the headstone. The Design for Death competition organized by Designboom with the Lien Foundation, ACM Foundation, and the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) is aimed at rethinking this.

You can browse submissions here. Meier calls some of the ideas “a bit outlandish,” but adds:

[T]here’s something interesting at each of their cores that harkens to this idea of creating a place of peace that is actually meaningful and draws you to return and notice it, not like many cemeteries now that are secreted at the edges of the city.