Changing the architecture of death

Major cities worldwide – including within Australia – are running out of cemetery space.  

Australia has over 6,300 cemeteries, yet a fraction of these remain operational.

Cremation is the main alternative to burial and accounts for around 70 per cent of Australian funerals. However, cremation comes with several environmental issues, including high emissions, with one overseas study finding the energy input of a single cremation is equivalent to powering a family home for a week.

While cremation and burial remain an important mainstay in our cultural and religious practices, other ways of marking death are emerging around the world that use less space and are kinder to the environment.

Borrowing from overseas developments like ‘aquamation’ and ‘terramation’, Australia can foster more environmentally focused architecture and memorialisation practices – simultaneously addressing the healing of grief and the healing of our planet by restoring natural landscapes.

It was with these twin objectives of healing that I developed my PhD thesis, Deadline, to explore practical designs for new funerary architecture incorporating novel technologies.

Aquamation – a liquid alternative to cremation

Aquamation, also known as alkaline hydrolysis, liquefies remains in a chamber containing water and an alkali chemical at a low heat for three to four hours. The bones are then dried and, like cremation, reduced to an urn containing ashes.

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The liquid by-product from aquamation contains no DNA material and can be treated for garden use or disposed via existing wastewater networks.

It has long been used in the pet industry, but availability for human application in Australia is currently limited. Unlike cremation, aquamation does not produce toxic emissions from furnaces and it can be readily retrofitted into existing buildings like funeral parlours.

Stimulated by these advantages, I developed designs for locating a dedicated aquamation facility on a small parcel of land within the East Perth Cemeteries heritage precinct, which has been closed since 1899.

Fittingly, the East Perth Cemeteries are located near the waters of the Derbarl Yerrigan/Swan River and the thriving wetlands that existed in the area before colonisation.

By re-imagining the space as a location for aquamation, it is also an opportunity to not only open the site to a new generation of use, but also reinstate some of the native ecology through initiatives like a reflection pool and perimeter gardens echoing the six local Nyoongar seasons.

Covered in a meshed shroud to support vegetation and a rooftop garden for post-memorial services, the ‘aquatorium’ becomes a living, breathing entity.

Speculative proposal for an aquatorium within the East Perth Cemeteries precinct. Picture: Domenic Trimboli

Speculative design for a funerary aquamation space. Picture: Domenic Trimboli

Speculative proposal for an aquatorium within the East Perth Cemeteries precinct, where ashes can be scattered among the graves. Picture: Domenic Trimboli

Speculative proposal for an aquatorium within the East Perth Cemeteries precinct. Picture: Domenic Trimboli

Speculative design for a funerary aquamation space. Picture: Domenic Trimboli

Speculative proposal for an aquatorium within the East Perth Cemeteries precinct, where ashes can be scattered among the graves. Picture: Domenic Trimboli

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Terramation – human composting

Pioneered by US designer Katrina Spade, and otherwise known as ‘human composting’ and ‘natural organic reduction’, terramation is designed to accelerate the decomposition of a corpse into useable compost.

The corpse is placed into a reusable modular vessel, and then typically covered in woodchips, mulch and straw and decomposed via microbes over ten weeks or more, depending on the facility.

As with aquamation, the remaining bones are crushed and then placed in an urn or mixed into the soil.

Spade opened the first US-based terramation facility in the state of Washington in 2021 and has since led efforts to legalise the process in other states.

Likewise, in 2016, Columbia University’s DeathLAB, conceptualised a network of “anaerobic memorial vessels” that convert the biomass generated by decomposition into a “perpetual constellation of light” within the woodlands of an existing cemetery.

This accelerated organic process was first conceived in their project entry to UCLA's 2009 Working Public Architecture 2.0 design competition, Re-conceiving Death, and widely published as Constellation Park.

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While no Australian State jurisdiction currently recognises terramation, public interest is reportedly gaining traction, opening the door to a range of enticing architectural possibilities.

For example, could the planned development of the Queen Victoria Market’s existing carpark into a public park be imagined as a place benefiting from using terramation soil? This would be fitting, as human remains still exist below the market; the site of the city’s first colonial cemetery.

Likewise, can this proposition include a new building where, amongst other functions like a gallery space, people can learn to make clay urns to hold the ashes of their departed loved ones as a form of art therapy?

Or, there’s Canberra’s new Southern Memorial Park, a proposed “bush cemetery for the bush capital” that aims to renew native fauna at a site heavily eroded by colonial agricultural use. Could a terramation facility (a ‘terratorium’) figure into these plans?

Whether it is in places like these or other sites removed from cemeteries altogether, terramation brings potential new synergies between our mortality and the natural environment.

Shed Z, a speculative building proposal for tethering terramation to public open space at Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market. Picture: Domenic Trimboli

Mannequin demonstration of human composting infrastructure within Katrina Spade’s Recompose Facility, USA. Picture: Recompose/Sabel Roizen

Proposal for Sylvan Constellation, Arnos Vale Cemetery. Picture: Columbia University DeathLAB and LATENT Productions

Shed Z, a speculative proposal for tethering terramation to public open space at Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market. Picture: Domenic Trimboli

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Consumer benefits

Australia’s funeral industry has become highly concentrated and corporate – so new technologies like these provide diverse and competitive alternatives for after-life care.

Funeral costs for aquamation and terramation are generally on a par with traditional cremation and less than typical Australian city burials, but don’t require the same resource intensity as crematoriums or the space for cemetery plots.

Importantly, there are no set rituals for aquamation or terramation funerals.

This means grieving family and friends can decide what feels right for them, putting the future of the after-death ceremony in our hands, where it belongs.

This research was produced as part of the thesis, Deadline: Scenarios for Australia’s Metropolitan Cemetery Architecture in the 21st Century (2024), and supported by the Nell Norris Fellowship for a PhD in Architecture.