Stardust Cemetery
When we were young,
we were always told that when people passed away, they became stars, always
shining and guiding us in the sky.
The Stardust Cemetery is a contemplation on the cycle of life and afterlife. The imaginary storyline is designed in a futuristic setting. With the available technology, identities and body remains of the dead can be distilled and stored in a 20cm by 20cm illuminating cube, sent off by the loved ones into the air, floating among the stardust in a 300m diameter globe. The extreme contrast in scale celebrates how fleeting yet bright the life of the individual could be.
Utilizing a spatially efficient approach to store and memorize afterlife, the floating Stardust Cemetery can potentially host up to millions of individuals — the more it hosts, the brighter the stardust would shine — relieving foreseeable population density issue caused by future urbanization.
Programmatically, the Stardust Cemetery provides public gathering and ceremonial spaces on the ground level. 12 private cabins attached to vertical railings allow intimate activities, including mourning and memory sharing. Through the railings, people could ascend to the stardust, while viewing the memory of their loved ones as hologram images projected by the cube, and finally send it off to join the circulating river of life, along with millions of other souls.
Non-Architecture Competiton “DYING”
Team: Qianmei Li, Stella Xu, Chengliang Li
The Stardust Cemetery is a contemplation on the cycle of life and afterlife. The imaginary storyline is designed in a futuristic setting. With the available technology, identities and body remains of the dead can be distilled and stored in a 20cm by 20cm illuminating cube, sent off by the loved ones into the air, floating among the stardust in a 300m diameter globe. The extreme contrast in scale celebrates how fleeting yet bright the life of the individual could be.
Utilizing a spatially efficient approach to store and memorize afterlife, the floating Stardust Cemetery can potentially host up to millions of individuals — the more it hosts, the brighter the stardust would shine — relieving foreseeable population density issue caused by future urbanization.
Programmatically, the Stardust Cemetery provides public gathering and ceremonial spaces on the ground level. 12 private cabins attached to vertical railings allow intimate activities, including mourning and memory sharing. Through the railings, people could ascend to the stardust, while viewing the memory of their loved ones as hologram images projected by the cube, and finally send it off to join the circulating river of life, along with millions of other souls.
Non-Architecture Competiton “DYING”
Team: Qianmei Li, Stella Xu, Chengliang Li