Architecture of Death. Part II

There's this veil of mysticism about death, it scares the crap out of people and we try not toreally think about it. So we have our various beliefs and stories about it, and they distance it from our real day to day lives. But there is this big industry, factory process to deal with it, and there are a lot of people who do deal with it everyday. Its probably a bit of a brutal analogy, but its a bit like people who work in the food industry - you just want to have your chicken or steak turn up sealed in a little plastic tray in the supermarket, you don't really want to have to think about the bolt-gun-between-the-eyes/rolling-onto-wet-concrete-floor/slashed-throat-open/blood-drained/gutted/fire-blazed/skinned/sawn/chopped-up horror that got it there, all nice and sanitary in its uniform plastic tray - but for a lot of people its just a job, working in a factory, which is what most abattoirs are.

The crematorium is probably about as popular as having an open cast mine or a paedophile safehouse-treatment centre located in your neighbourhood. But they are, by their nature, sympathetic to the local vernacular, designed to look at least, gentle, non-offensive and calm. No one tried to create a Po-Mo crematorium aesthetic experiment. The brief is strictly conformist to limit the distress to the mourners.

Form follows function to a certain extent, and the design has to incorporate a large plant room, where the cremator and associated equipment and machinery are housed. This needs to be large and give access to the fairly complicated equipment, so its often large, airy and warehouse like, with, necessarily, a concrete floor. The public do NOT go into this room. This room would definitely remove the veil of mystery.

Aside from various adjacent office/storage/reception rooms, the building is axial, with a catafalque outside the cremator room, and a larger, main space beyond that, in which the service is held. This room, beyond the initial entrance hall way is basically, as far as the mourners go. The building is axial for the processional purpose of the coffin, entering through the aisle, between seated mourners, into the catafalque and on, through the closed doors into the beyond, the next life, or whatever you choose to believe (but actually, into the big warehouse room at the end unfortunately).

It is a secular building, without fixed religious ornament - the company has a business to run, so it can't exclude a 'market' by fixing itself to just one religious denomination. So the ephemeral, transcendental aesthetic experience is difficult to achieve without making it look too much like a church. But high pitched ceilings recall cathedrals, in a slight way (and conveniently follow the roof pitch line from the warehouse-cremator room at the back). A single pitched roof line may make a large building look a bit too much like a shed, so it is not too much difficult to slightly raise the pitch over the vestry, but the essential line is one long contiguous roof pitch. This is cheap and effect and has been used on countless industrial buildings, and is very effective for space and cost.

Filtered sun light from high windows sends shafts of light through the vestry, on to the seated congregation.

Clad in local stone and decorated internally with a homogeneous off-white stucco, a slate roof maybe, it masks the simple concrete block-work construction and steel i-beams of modern building, which would de-mystify the event and bring the harsh reality to the grieving mourners eyes.

Finally, the plan of the site, the landscaping. This is one of the most important bits of the whole experience, and key to the company's strategy of 'brand loyalty'. They do, effectively, want you to come back.

People have arrived in the carpark, disembarked and made there way in small groups along paths to the front of the building, a portico with a separate road arriving at it, along which the hearse arrives, and disgorges the coffin, under the cover of the overhanging portico.

Unfortunately, this arrangement, from an architectural point of view, with a carpark supporting a main building, and an additional circular access road for dropping off the body, is almost identical to how a MacDonald's Drive-Thru works, with a few more trees and bushes scattered around. And it is necessary, it is efficient. Hopefully, the hearses won't arrive too fast though, or you will have a traffic jam.

The congregation sit, and often the coffin is carried up the aisle (or wheeled), and sits on a plinth at the far end of the vestry - it will go through into the catafalque, then they close the doors to the vestry, to hide the view when they open the doors to the cremator room.

When you go through the service and the coffin is in front of you, and the taboo of death is being confronted by the congregation, everyone is sad and uncomfortable, and obviously feels awful. This is not a good feeling to have - from a commercial point of view at least, and they certainly would not want you to just leave on that note. But when the coffin is removed and the service finishes, everyone filters out into a 'Garden of Contemplation' (not Prayer, obviously). This is a release from the strictures of the service. Fresh air, a beautiful garden, possibly a small pondy/lake thing, probably some flowing water somewhere, and a good view (plenty of open sky) and a chance to stretch the legs. This emphasises the fact that what is done is done, you are back in the real world and life goes on, and the whoever you have left hopefully had a good life - also, it is not YOU who has just been left inside the building behind.

Conveniently, the Exit signs are located in the direction of the congregation's general drift, like when you leave a ride at a theme park, just as the next batch are getting out of their cars and drifting, in small huddled groups, to the signs for Entrance...