Created and Sold by Susan Narduli
All Faiths Columbarium and Garden of the Senses - Architecture
Featured In Fish Interfaith Center at Chapman University, Orange, CA
$ On Inquiry
This project grew out of the relationship between two spaces - one a repository for last remains, for ashes, the other a garden teeming with life.
The two spaces are formally separate but conceptually joined.
You approach the columbarium through the garden. This is the place of the senses: a place to touch, taste, hear, see and smell. Linear beds of plants form screens of color and fragrance that change throughout the day and the year. Bright herbs grow between the concrete paving stones, releasing their scents with each footstep. In the northwest corner, visible from inside the chapels, is a maple tree. The Deciduous maple is a symbol of the cycle of life and death, as the leaves are born and die each year.
A white onyx wall, illuminated from within, traces the division between the garden of the senses and the columbarium. The glowing stone evokes the elusive separation between the living and the dead, a separation of a single breath. Onyx benches are placed in the garden, echoing the light from the wall.
The threshold of the columbarium is the place of transition. Here, there is no gate. The seamless vocabulary of death and the exuberance of the garden meet here. Herbs give way to gravel. Fragrances give way to silence.
Like the garden, the columbarium is open to the sky. Its high walls frame the heavens. Its reflective blue marble extends upward and brings the sky into the solemn space. I have raised and inclined the south wall to open the space and reinforce this connection. The walls are sculptural planes. Within these planes of stone, the etched names stand in formal contrast, a remembrance of the lives honored here.
The two spaces are formally separate but conceptually joined.
You approach the columbarium through the garden. This is the place of the senses: a place to touch, taste, hear, see and smell. Linear beds of plants form screens of color and fragrance that change throughout the day and the year. Bright herbs grow between the concrete paving stones, releasing their scents with each footstep. In the northwest corner, visible from inside the chapels, is a maple tree. The Deciduous maple is a symbol of the cycle of life and death, as the leaves are born and die each year.
A white onyx wall, illuminated from within, traces the division between the garden of the senses and the columbarium. The glowing stone evokes the elusive separation between the living and the dead, a separation of a single breath. Onyx benches are placed in the garden, echoing the light from the wall.
The threshold of the columbarium is the place of transition. Here, there is no gate. The seamless vocabulary of death and the exuberance of the garden meet here. Herbs give way to gravel. Fragrances give way to silence.
Like the garden, the columbarium is open to the sky. Its high walls frame the heavens. Its reflective blue marble extends upward and brings the sky into the solemn space. I have raised and inclined the south wall to open the space and reinforce this connection. The walls are sculptural planes. Within these planes of stone, the etched names stand in formal contrast, a remembrance of the lives honored here.
Item All Faiths Columbarium and Garden of the Senses
Created by Susan Narduli
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