high in the sky

Traditional cemeteries take up space that will never be gained back in the future......

A whacky proposal was put forward nearly 200 years ago - architect Thomas Willson proposed building a mausoleum in the shape of a pyramid 94 storeys high on London's Primrose Hill.

Willson reckoned that, with space for 5 million bodies, the mausoleum solve London's shortage of burial grounds for ever.

Projected to cost just £2500 to build, Willson reckoned the mausoleum would make a profit of £10 million when full - but the plan was abandoned in 1829 when Highgate Cemetery was opened. You can read more about Willson's plans here.

Inspired perhaps by Wilson, the designers Yalin Fu and Ihsuan Lin recently unveiled a plan for a new skyscraper in Mumbai, the Moshka Tower. The  project takes traditional burial methods from four major religions in Mumbai and translates them into an urban context.  For Muslims, it provides areas for funerals and space for garden burial; for Christians, areas for funerals and burial; for Hindus, facilities for cremation and a river to deposit a portion; for Parsis, a tower of silence is located on the roof of the tower.

This structure would not be the world’s first high-rise of graves.  A 13-story building on a hill in Santos, Brazil, already houses the dead.

And a South Korean architect has proposed building a high-rise graveyard “where a cell phone call could light up the specific receptacle of your loved one’s remains, so you could view them from a distance.”