At death in the United States we are faced with two options: burial or cremation.
While some outliers select donating their remains to
science or green funerals, as of 2015, according to statistics
from the National Funeral Directors Association, the rate of burial is
at 45.8% and cremation at 48.2%. Architect Katrina Spade is proposing an
alternative, where through natural decomposition humans are transformed
into soil.“There’s a lot of meaning for me that my body, when I die, could
become part of the natural ecosystem again,” she told Hyperallergic. The
Urban Death Project is currently fundrasing on Kickstarter after three years of planning, including the support of an Echoing Green
fellowship.As Spade explains, it “investigates the problem of our
current funeral history from a design perspective” and “from a human
experience perspective,” with a three-story core where bodies are placed
on woodchips and sawdust and the composted soil containing their energy
could be used to grow trees, flowers, fields of waving grass, or be
returned to their urban environment to remain part of the community in
gardens or parks.