Burial Grounds

Green Infrastructure in the Non-Formal City

Paraisopolis - Sao Paulo, BR

Today, there are one billion people living in squatter communities worldwide, a number expected to double by 2030. 50% of our total urban will be informal, but only an estimated 5% of the design profession is occupied with the phenomenon of informal urbanism. Statistics show that more people live & die in the informal city than in the formal city and this project proposes to implement Burial Grounds in Paraisopolis in conjuction with tactical green infrastructure interventions. This proposal merges the wall niche burial typology with natural ground burial specifications to produce clear advantages. The burial niches act as soil retention walls that negotiate topography, provide access, contain soil and provide space for burial niches to induce decomposition processes. The system is engineered to provide an aerobic rhizosphere where pollutants are transformed into plant nutrients. In sum the project combines the technical with the social, cultural, and the religious.

GSD 6445 | Spring 2010 Professor: Christian Werthmann Tools: Adobe CS, AutoCAD, GIS, SketchUp, Rhinoceros, Grasshoper Algorithm Modeling