Last landscapes: the architecture of the cemetery in the west: designs for death - Book Review

Architectural Review, The, Feb, 2004 by James Stevens Curl

By Ken Worpole. London: Reaktion Books. 2003. [pounds sterling]22

The subtitle is misleading: Worpole's book is concerned less about architecture than with meaning in landscapes and with problems of commemoration after Modernism failed to rise to the challenge (and indeed, for the most part, ignored it). After all, the Modern Movement aggressively promoted the obliteration of the past. Regimes such as those of Soviet Communism and National Socialism realized how important was communal memory to a culture: that is why in the Soviet Union so many burial-grounds were deliberately destroyed, and why, during the Holocaust, industrialized cremation was an added obscenity to mass-murder.

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Yet Architecture began with the Tomb. Today, perhaps in contemporary Britain more than anywhere, death has been marginalized (except for purposes of entertainment), and cremation prevents an architectural response to the mysteries of death, because British crematoria are designed to pretend to be anything but what they are, and mourners are denied a ceremonial climax. Furthermore, there is usually no connection between crematorium buildings and landscapes, and entire ensembles are feebly suburban and meaningless. Worpole touches upon the importance of meaning in the disposal of the dead from early times to the present day, and his wife's photographs often evoke something of what is lacking in the banalities of contemporary British celebrations of death.

Last Landscapes would have gained in authority if more care had been taken over the proof-reading. One historian, often mentioned, has his name recorded correctly only occasionally, and there are other errors (the German is confused with the Austro-Hungarian Empire) as well as a poor Index. However, it contains many truths and insights on which to ponder, and could help to stimulate much-needed changes in the way we design for death.

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