Cemetery as a Place of Cultural Communication

Abstract

Cemeteries serve as repositories of history and memories of the local community, as well as afford the living population an opportunity to connect and learn about a culture’s past. Accordingly, the cemetery as a place and the rituals associated with death and remembrance that it holds, not only communicate and express the ideals of a collective identity, but also undergo modifications with time and geography. Through the study of burial rituals and funerary traditions of the multicultural community in the City of Richmond in British Columbia, this thesis seeks unifying qualities within the diversity of practices that will offer strategies for the design of ritual spaces that not only communicate the cultural identity within each community, but also serve as a place in which new ritual practices are born and integrated for the greater community of Richmond.