A project by recent Master of Landscape Architecture graduate, Tyler Bradt (MLA 2013) was featured in the online magazine World Landscape Architecture.

Titled “New Urban Cemetery: Departures 1 & 2,” Bradt’s project provides an alternative to the traditional Garden Cemetery: a new urban burial ground within a dense urban neighbourhood to honour and remember those who have deceased. As cities densify, become more multicultural, and face increased environmental challenges and and growing income disparity, “a new design paradigm is required for future burial grounds,” argues Bradt.

Bradt says that the many “leftover” sites found within cities — “alleys, highway off-ramps, and disused rail infrastructure” — could become the home of new burial grounds, and his work shows how transforming these often-neglected orphaned spaces into meaningful memorial sites can be achieved through thoughtful design. He chose small vacant laneway — a mere 196-square-metres — along Queen Street in Toronto as his site.

Writes Bradt:

The ‘departure’ begins with resomation – a process by which the body is dissolved and “ashes” are created from the bones. This takes place in a room beneath the main open-air chapel. After the memorial service, the body is lowered to the resomation room, which can process up to 3 bodies per day.

The deceased can be celebrated on the site by having their remains mixed into a mortar and interred in a layered wall that builds over time.  Alternatively the remains can be placed in a set of helium balloons released into the air via a platform above the city. The balloons can be tracked resulting in a deposition ‘footprint’ left as a reminder and memorial showing where the balloons burst in the atmosphere. Relatives and loved ones of the deceased can take part in the ceremony of either laying the mortar to build up the wall or releasing their departed into the sky from the bamboo and moss covered platform. An open-air chapel is settled among the burial walls.

The entire journey through the site mimics life. One must wind their way among the walls to find the chapel, weave through dense bamboo to discover the end of the release platform. Throughout, there are strong punctuations of light and dark, vibrant colour or somber greys, soft and hard materials. For future visits to the site by those remembering, there are a series of contemplation rooms where one may be immersed in silence and darkness, or can hear their loved one speak back to them through a previously recorded message.”

“New Urban Cemetery: Departures 1 & 2” was part of Bradt's final thesis project at the Daniels Faculty. His faculty advisor was Associate Professor Mason White. This isn't the only project by Bradt that has received recognition lately. At the beginning of the year, he was honoured with a 2013 Sustainable Design Award for his project "Free Tree City."