B4_#051 // The Tomb // Lloyd Lee

According to the Population Reference Bureau, there have been about 108 billion people throughout human history  ( That is from 50,000 BC until now ). That is only about 15 times the number of people living today. Could we have been able to afford a tomb, or a gravestone for that matter, for every single person who ever lived ? With the ever growing population of 21st century, we perhaps cannot afford to separate the place of the living from the place of the dead. 

Here, I propose a layer, not a place, for our burial rituals. A person’s remain is compressed to a standardised stone cube. The cube, then, acts as a gravestone without any monumentality. When the cubes of same shape and size are put next to one another, death becomes a democratic process for everyone. 

The first cube of the first death is marked with 50cm x 50cm plot of land. With more deaths, cubes take over a hectare, then two, then three ….. then hundreds. At one point, this field of cubes has become a layer with no visible ends. This 4mx4mx4m cube draws a terrace of a household in 200 years. The architecture of the living is ‘settled’ into the layer built upon the death of the previous generation. 

Lloyd Lee is a diploma student at the Architectural Association School of Architecture