Islands of Elegy: Dispersing the Urban Cemetery

Abstract

Islands of Elegy proposes a new kind of cemetery, one that brings death closer to us and resists the stagnation of memory. This new cemetery—the “microcemetery”— manifests as several small sanctuary spaces embedded in highly urban environments: on street corners, in plazas, etc. These spaces have the capacity to build upward rather than outward, resisting the spatial imposition of the contemporary cemetery. The dispersal of these microcemeteries across Boston creates a landscape that reflects the true metabolism of grief, a process which may never come to completion, which may linger or be lost to time, and which often permeates the everyday.