Center for Composting Corpses
Type: Academic - Academic - Individual
Semester: First Year Master - Fall 2019
Location: New York, NY
Located in the neighborhood of Inwood in Manhattan, New York, the Center is a composting facility accessible to all members of the neighborhood as well as the rest of the inhabitants of the city. Addressing the global environmental problems caused by landfills and traditional forms of funeral practices, my intervention proposes a permanent composting facility that provides residents of New York a space to not only compost their organic waste but also compost their departed.
Above grade infrastructure provide programs where: funeral rites can be observed, loved ones can be respectfully placed into composting pods and where a community garden can grow which uses the compost that is produced on site. Additionally, the excess compost produced on site can be transported to other places in the city and even farms outside of the city. The program below grade allows for a space where the composting takes place, providing a sanctuary for residents to come and view the cyclical system of how all living things can benefit from one another.
By giving back to the earth we can continue the cycle of life and death. Organic waste is composted in the large, hanging repositories, whereas the human bodies are composted in individual pods fitted into the walls surrounding the repositories.
Above Grade Perspective
Below Grade Perspective
Plans - (left) Above Grade, (right) Below Grade
A triptych, showing the three stages of how the body is treated on site. In the first drawing, we see how funeral rights and other ceremonies can be practiced on the top most floor of the structure, that is open to the city around it. In the middle drawing, we see how the body is placed in composting pods, on the second level of the infrastructure, in private rooms. In the last drawing, we see the body in the composting pod being transported to the underground mortuarium, where the pod is stored while the composting takes place.
