Oslo, Norway: The Cemetery Skyscraper

Credit: The Verge

Six feet under, but twelve stories high – it’s not a marketing scheme yet, but it could be. A student in Oslo, Norway has been turning heads with his vision for the world’s first skyscraper cemetery.

The building was designed by architecture student Martin McSherry in response to his country’s increasing lack of space for burial grounds. According to McSherry, the building would feature “an adjoining, permanent crane” to bring coffins into available spaces in the vertical cemetery. The building’s design would allow for it to expand over time, providing an attractive solution to what has become very real problem: finding space for burial grounds.

The lack of potential burial spaces for citizens has long surpassed its role as an eventual concern for the country. “Norway has been dealing with a land scarcity problem for a while,” reports Gizmodo on the topic, “the country has put systems into place to address the burial land concern, such as allotting just two decades for a person in their burial spot before the land is reused for another body.” It’s another reason why McSherry futuristic burial design looked so attractive at the Oslo Conference for Nordic Cemeteries and Graveyards.

“The building’s design would allow for it to expand over time, providing an attractive solution to what has become very real problem: finding space for burial grounds.”

Practically speaking, McSherry’s design is an innovative solution, ticking all boxes of our imagined economic checklists. Why not marry the skyscraper, the 21st century staple of architecture, to one of the world’s oldest rituals?

For some people, the idea just doesn’t sit right. A skyscraper? As a final resting place for our loved ones? It has the potential to feel create an instant contradiction to everything end of life stands for: the belief that our burial should bring us back to the earth from where we came.

Oslo, Norway.
(Credit: amypond)

An “old-fashioned,” subterranean burial is never a happy affair, but it’s an ancient human ritual that provides comfort in a time of grief. In Mt. Carmel, Israel, Archaeologists from the University of Haifa have even uncovered burial grounds dating back 13,700 years. “These ancient humans went even further than we’d previously thought in developing ceremonial funeral practice to honor the dead,” says the University, “engaging in rituals that closely resemble the same ones people engage in today…[we even found] impressions made by flowers and other plants apparently buried beneath the dead.”

“For some people, the idea just doesn’t sit right. A skyscraper? As a final resting place for our loved ones?”

McSherry’s design is certainly different from what we’re used to – but different doesn’t inherently mean unacceptable. It just means that we must be more demanding of ourselves – more demanding regarding our capacity to embrace the inevitable changes over-population brings.

McSherry’s proposed design.
(Credit: The Verge)

And although it’s a skyscraper, McSherry’s proposed cemetery to the people of Norway is a delicate structure, with many nods to “earth-based” burial. The plans for the sky-bound cemetery include plenty green spaces, where flowers and trees weave in and out of the building’s open-air design elements. And with its all white crossbeams, many have made the observation that the skyscraper resembles a kind of graceful beehive – the ultimate metaphor for community. What more could you need from a final resting place?

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