The porosity of losses

TOKYO VERTICAL CEMETERY

competition finalist

Kostas Manolidis, 2017

 

Death is absurd. It’s a condition of life and yet the denial of it.

The vertical cemetery must convey this paradox. It’s an edifice banal and extraordinary, solid and porous, submitting to the surrounding order and defying it at the same time.

Its openings remain unglazed to welcome the breezes. The painful content shouldn’t be concealed. Facing loss and expressing grief should not be silenced. They must be a visible part of the city’s rituals.

The building fronts, like the spongy core of bones, evoking both an organic activity and an eroding process, reconcile life with the abyss of death.