TIMELINE

ANCIENT FUNERAL PRACTICES

I selected a few ancient tombs that I think are representative of these practices, containing the basic configuration required by the chinese ancient tombs.

RITUALS

As a result, the core of my new cemetery mode design is about reconstructing the content of new rituals. According to traditional Chinese Confucian culture, The most important thing of ceremonies is to serve the dead as if they were living, as if they were still with us. In mourning, we should not go overboard, beyond fully expressing our grief. mourning is the most major part, is the process of living family members and friends resolving grief and accepting the death of relatives or friends. I break down the contents of mourning into six stages: sadness, calmness, farewell, sharing, healing, and memories. And I started an experiment to try and understand and conceptualize the corresponding architectural answers in turn. Saying goodbye to the deceased body in the private space of the chapel, keeping calm in the soft light and shadow space, sharing the sadness with relatives or friends in the public courtyard, after walking up to the garden, healing in the natural environment of the observation deck, and finally embracing and accepting the death, where the body is returned to nature, and the passing of the individual gives birth to a new life, where new memories may bloom.

 

SITE

Here is the site called Shucheng, which is a county in the west-central part of Anhui Province. The area is famous for tea, and its architecture is also very distinctive. Huizhou Architecture is one of the traditional Chinese architecture styles. The architecture uses bricks, wood, and stone as raw materials, notably timber frames as significant structures. Huizhou Architecture is rich in bamboo and bamboo crafts as well. 

Here is the site map. The black blocks represent temporary dwellings for attending mourners, the gray arrow represents the entrance to the village, the red area for the cemetery, which is in a bamboo forest, at the end of the village. A very important piece of background information on this village is that there was a couple who migrated here to raise their family because of the Sino-Japanese war, where all village members had a blood relationship, which is why I consider design as a bigger space for the whole village, not just my grandfather. The deceased from this village can have their tombstone or memorial ancestral tablet in the ceremony hall. This idea also offers an opportunity: if someone is unable to return to the village to mourn for whatever reason, others who are able to be there can express grief and mourn on their behalf of them. Most of the new generation will not reside there permanently, hence the temporary housing in the village for short stays and the abundance of hostels for visitors and family to rent. 

As I mentioned before. Bamboo elements are embedded in the roofs and walls in the local residents’ houses.

I found one material that I’d apply to that site called bamboo reinforced concrete. It has a raw, natural, and non-decorative material language. The main building structure is constructed of concrete with a bamboo framework.  The bamboo texture left on the concrete surface reduces the visual and material scale of the concrete wall and harmonizes with the surrounding trees and greenery. 

I also researched some unique local architectural language, which would be used in the funeral practice environment,  citang also can be called: the ancestral hall and it is the space for local funeral ceremonies, paifang is the traditional style of Chinese architectural arch or a gateway structure. This can be translated as a cemetery entrance. The building style would imitate the local residential buildings, which feature black tiles and white walls. In terms of spatial structure, tianjin (a Chinese word that translates to “ceiling opening”) is widely used in local housing. These ceiling openings often served as bridge connections between different spaces and possessed meditative qualities in the simplicity of their design and in their inherent opening to the natural world. 

The placement of the temporary housing could also convey tianjin layout methods. A few hostels surround with a  blue circle open public space for people doing activities, The design of the path should be winding and winding along with the bamboo forest, so that the whole building can be hidden by nature visually, and people living in the hostels can’t see the hall directly. 

 

JOURNEY