The complex of crematorium, mortuary and cemetery sits on the rim of a desolate landscape, a former railway yard on the River Scheldt. This graduation project proceeds from an exploration made into the various aspects of death. The stepping-off points and the arguments assumed concrete form in models and drawings. The 'words' in the story a cemetery tells were brought together in a matrix and analysed as to their impact and meaning. Composed into a collage, the 'words' provide the concept behind the design.

The wall is a key theme in the design, symbolizing the partition between life and death. Walls accompany the process and give it direction. Doubling the concrete walls generates a zone, a transitional area in which to take leave of the departed. Modelling the walls creates gateways to the other side of the wall; here is where life consorts with death. This modelling throws up a concatenation of places belonging to the process, so that the structure of the concrete walls represents the solidified movement of that process. Between the concrete walls are timber blocks of services.

The cemetery component consists of walls of urns, catacombs and burial squares. Places for scattering ashes are located in the country and along the Scheldt.

Place of education: Tilburg
Tutor: Wim van den Bergh
Specialization: architecture.