Eternal Landscapes: A Reframing of Monuments in the Civic Cemetery

Abstract

Secular demands on space are shifting Western funerary culture away from traditional individual memorials. New burial modes omit the gravestone, and ash spreading rituals detach the act of remembering from the body. While these changes are culturally apparent, cemeteries remain rooted in tradition, presenting memory through the gravestone’s associated symbologies. At varying scales, this thesis breaks with such symbolic norms, proposing the window as a memorial device that activates a temporal link between memory and remembering being. The window shifts the experience of the cemetery inwards, connecting with its visitor’s personal subjective world, and outwards towards the immense scale and temporality of the surrounding landscape. The window engages ephemeral and intangible symbols of change in the natural world, framing their presence while acting as an armature for ritual, memory and mourning. In absence of the gravestone, perception leads, centering the emotional individual experience in the collective ceremonial landscape.