Give Me A Clean Death | Rethinking Our Modern Death-Care System

Abstract

Thousands of tons of carcinogenic chemicals are interred in the ground every year by the modern death care industry in the United States alone. We, as a modern society, have also collectively chosen to relegate the spaces that our dead occupy, sequestering death to hospitals, funeral parlors and cemeteries, consequently removing it, as a concept, from public view. Much of our death care infrastructure is out of sight and out of mind. Simultaneously, we are running out of space to house our dead. This thesis urges that we rethink how we choose to approach the death-care industry, repurposing neglected, non-functional spaces within our urban fabric as modern cemeteries, columbariums and memorials. Why expend resources erecting new structures, when our cities already encompass so many abandoned and neglected spaces that are already interwoven into the historic palimpsest of our urban metropolises? Repurposing historical structures that are no longer serving their original function has been steadily gaining popularity within the field of historic preservation. Why not expand how we choose to repurpose such structures, to encompass a function as integral to our society-at-large as how we choose to care for our deceased? In this thesis, I propose the adaptive reuse of a defunct industrial site along the city of Bellingham’s downtown waterfront into a functioning death-care site and public park.