Green-Wood Cemetery is a host of transient multitudes that are responsive to its ecological seasonality and the in-flux cultural grief practices of its urban context. Woven into the living fabric of the cemetery are a series of terramation nodes that reconceptualize death as an ecological and inter-relational process. Informed by multiscalar interdependencies, from cellular senescence to cultural rituals of grief, these regenerative interventions cultivate porous, adaptive spaces that honor the emotional complexity of mourning. The proposal positions grief as a spatial, temporal, and ecological process, unfolding within the Dell Water’s landscape of continual transformation. Intentional care for the deceased, those living and grieving, and the grounds of the cemetery frame a responsive landscape with gradients of privacy and collectivity. A material library, harvested from Green-Wood’s 478 verdant acres, cultivates and supports the process of terramation, which re-envisions care for the deceased by facilitating an ecologically sensitive process that is both dignifying and able to be sustained by the grounds of the cemetery. Perpetual care is redefined through spatial practices that invite visitors and nature to interact and care for one another, furthered by the woven materiality of the structure itself which necessitates maintenance and adaptability directed by fluctuations in its natural context. In celebration of Dell Water’s blooming seasonality, a constructed, adapted landscape unfolds and transforms with its visitors who are afforded the space to contemplate, reflect, heal, and breathe.
