Throughout history, the structures built for death have mirrored the core beliefs, values, and deep-seated fears of different cultures and regions. Funerary architecture serves as more than a burial site because it functions as a location for memory rituals and collective meaning through elaborate tombs, cemeteries, cremation grounds, and mausoleums. Deathscapes experience a silent transformation during this time when climate urgency meets land scarcity and spiritual and cultural perspectives rapidly change.
COVID-19 and the Infrastructure for Death
The COVID-19 pandemic established a turning point for worldwide approaches to managing death. It revealed how both health systems and spatial structures lack resilience. The extensive number of deaths overwhelmed conventional funerary architecture, which included crematoriums, burial grounds, and morgues (Sanders, 2020).
The pandemic showed that standard deathcare operations create significant environmental impacts. The pandemic required urban areas to transform their spaces by converting refrigerated trucks into mobile morgues and using car parks as emergency cremation sites. Open-air cremations which are traditional in many Global South regions caused a noticeable increase in air pollution throughout the region. The outdated design and technology of crematoriums operate continuously to produce toxic emissions that affect the atmosphere (Sanders, 2020). The crisis demonstrated that funerary architecture needs immediate design to meet both cultural requirements and environmental standards.
The pandemic resulted in a historic rise in biomedical waste and plastic waste from single-use PPE kits, gloves, and body wraps, which mostly ended up in landfills and oceans, thus worsening ecological strain (UNEP, 2021). The COVID-19 crisis demonstrated that death management practices result in significant environmental damage while simultaneously raising mortality statistics.
Innovations in Global Funerary Practices
During the pandemic, architects along with environmentalists and policymakers started pushing for alternative solutions to minimize the effects of traditional funerary practices on the environment and space usage. Natural organic reduction, or human composting, has become a widely accepted practice in the United States. Recompose provided families with a method that allowed deceased loved ones to transform into usable soil through a thirty-day process. This process, in which embalming fluids, caskets, and cremation operations are eliminated, dramatically reduces the carbon footprint (Recompose, 2022).
Alkaline hydrolysis which is also known as water-based cremation received growing attention across the UK as well as Canada, Scotland and Australia. The method utilizes alkaline solutions to convert human bodies into liquid and bone fragments that produce sterile waste while eliminating atmospheric pollution (Scottish Government Consultation, 2023; Cremation Assoc. of North America, n.d.).
Vertical cemeteries paired with digital columbarium have appeared in dense cities as practical solutions to address space needs. Brazil’s Memorial Necrópole Ecumênica serves as a model for vertical cemetery design by being the tallest cemetery structure in the world (Durn, 2021). The columbarium facilities in Tokyo utilize robotic retrieval systems with LED altar technology to create modern memorial spaces that maximize land usage (Adelstein, 2019; Springer and Ogura, 2017).
The popularity of nature-based solutions has been increasing rapidly. Germany, Sweden, and New Zealand now practice forest burials, in which people can choose to let their bodies decompose naturally beneath selected trees while using biodegradable burial items. The burial site transforms into an actively growing forest, which unites environmental preservation with the preservation of spiritual traditions (Better Place Forests, 2022).
Digital mourning practices started to advance at the same time. Virtual memorial platforms and live-streamed funerals allowed people from different countries to participate in rituals through metaverse cemeteries and online spaces for grief during lockdowns. The pandemic accelerated South Korea’s, Italy’s, and Germany’s adoption of digital mourning technologies because these tools preserved emotional bonds between people who remained physically apart (MacNeil et al., 2023).
The Broader Impact on Communities
The evolution of funerary architecture produces effects that extend beyond design because it changes our death-related living practices and our relationship with nature and city planning methods.
Sustainability: The implementation of composting vessels together with alkaline hydrolysis chambers creates significant reductions in energy consumption when compared to traditional burial and cremation methods. Integrating renewable energy systems, low-carbon materials, and landscape strategies that return nutrients to the earth is now standard practice for architects designing these new facilities that align spatial practice with regenerative furenary design (Recompose, 2022).
Land Use: Traditional cemeteries have consumed extensive urban territory which resulted in empty spaces that contrast with active city environments. Modern funerary architecture integrates deathscapes into urban life by implementing memorial parks with mixed uses and vertical burial solutions and building adaptations of underutilized facilities. The new approach transforms funerary spaces into public memorials which become integral components of urban identity (Adelstein, 2019; Springer and Ogura, 2017).
Social Healing: Modern funerary architecture provides solutions that fulfill emotional and cultural requirements. The practice of architecture now responds to changing mourning customs through the creation of forest memorials and digital shrines which serve as platforms for cross-border grief. The built environment functions as a mediator which facilitates both memory preservation and healing processes to create inclusive and restorative environments for communities to process their losses (Eternal Reefs, 2023; MacNeil et al., 2023).
Affordability: The increasing expenses of standard deathcare services have driven people to seek alternative options. The reduced material usage smaller land requirements and lower maintenance needs of green burials and digital memorials result in lower costs for users. The changing deathcare industry leads to the development of funerary architecture which combines modularity with minimal environmental impact and expanded accessibility (Recompose, 2022).
Toward a New Architecture of Mourning
The changing world demands that funerary architecture develop solutions that balance historical traditions with environmental responsibility. The modern language of mourning emerges through spatial innovation that includes forest burials, human composting, digital altars, and vertical tombs. The COVID-19 pandemic served as a necessary lesson that exposed the unsustainability of our present-day death infrastructure and its lack of resilience. Architects and planners across the world are starting to envision deathscapes that both preserve memory and create life regeneration.
References:
Adelstein, J. (2019) Rising To Heaven: Japan’s High-Rise, High-Tech Solution To A Shortage Of Cemetery Spaces. Forbes, 18 March.
Better Place Forests (2022) What is a green burial?
Cremation Assoc. of North America (n.d.) Alkaline Hydrolysis. Available at: https://www.cremationassociation.org/alkalinehydrolysis.html (Accessed: 4 May 2025).
Durn, S. (2021) Memorial Necrópole Ecumênica. Atlas Obscura, 14 September.
Eternal Reefs (2023) What is an Eternal Reef?
MacNeil, A., Findlay, B., Bimman, R., et al. (2023) Exploring the Use of Virtual Funerals during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Scoping Review. Omega (United States), 88 (2): 425–448. doi:10.1177/00302228211045288.
Recompose (2022) Environmental Impact- Recompose.
Sanders, C.J. (2020) Death-care practices in the shadow of the pandemic: Can history help us? Available at: www.dulwichcentre.com.au.
Scottish Government Consultation (2023) Alkaline hydrolysis (‘water cremation’) regulation in Scotland.
Springer, K. and Ogura, J. (2017) Floating cemeteries and space burials: Asia’s futuristic take on death. CNN, 4 December.
UNEP (2021) Covid-19 Waste Management Factsheet- Household Medical Waste Management Strategies.
