Avant-Garde Afterlife: Space Shortage Inspires New Burial Ideas : NPR
Welcome to Constellation Park, population 5,000. But everyone here — suspended in hanging vessels under New York’s Manhattan Bridge — is dead.
It’s not the set of a dystopian film, but rather a proposed solution to a problem faced by cities around the world: Where can the urban dead rest in peace these days? Constellation Park is one of several concepts by DeathLab, a Columbia University-based research and design space focused on “re-conceiving how we live with death in the metropolis.” This group of researchers and architects are quietly working on ideas that include a looming tower that that holds “pods” (i.e., graves) that light up and above which people can stroll, and a spaceship-like structure on Manhattan’s waterfront that’s like a park where the waking can slip in and out.
“We are running out of space,” says Karla Rothstein, a Columbia professor who is part of DeathLab. It’s not just a New York problem, she says: “It’s happening all over the world.”
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