A landscape for memory and contemplation.
project
Private Cemetery
client
Private
Team (lekker design)
Ong Ker-Shing, Joshua Comaroff, Chen Shunann, Huixian Yee
This project came with a fascinating brief: a private cemetery, near Nanjing, for a Singaporean businessman of Chinese origins. Several generations of his family are buried on a small plot of land surrounded by a nursery, used for many years to grow trees. The concept was to maintain the burial plots without any alteration, while turning the surrounding landscape into a park accessible to the public.
The site included an existing pine forest, as well as many mature trees which were transplanted within the site rather that importing new specimens. A new undulating lawn and wildflower meadow was added at the centre of the park, as well as cypress gardens. An existing stone retention basin was naturalized and converted to a small lake. Set amid the gardens and forest are a series of small rhetorical pavilions—like the follies of English landscape—which provide quiet moments to contemplate or simply enjoy framed vistas of the surroundings. These pavilions are made with a very strict simplicity; generally they are monolithic and constructed of wood, off-form concrete, and asphalt shingles.
All images by Studio Periphery