Saugus Eco-cemetery
Landscape Of Healing, Passage, & Renewal
Saugus, Massachusetts

The funeral industry is experiencing unprecedented growth; the $20-billion industry contributes to environmental problems with catastrophic consequences. Each year the United States buries nearly a million gallons of embalming fluid, 500,000 caskets, and countless tons of concrete, tropical hardwoods, and precious metals––all in an effort to preserve and memorialize our loved ones. The process of death has become grossly sanitized and unnatural. We should ask more from ourselves, but few examples exist in the US of cemeteries that are more than vast manicured lawns with rigid grids of carved headstones speckled with Norway Maples and potted Red Geraniums.

This project presents ideas for healing a severely impaired landscape: the Saugus Quarry. It explores the complex relationships between cemeteries and watersheds and incorporates 'green burial strategies’ into a consciously designed landscape. What if each person’s death contributed to a commentary on the health and quality of our environment? Could our cemeteries serve as important educational tools that galvanize a community? Is it possible to use the dead to protect the living? Can we braid vital habitats and ecosystems into our cemeteries and manage them without the use of toxic chemicals?