The project is an alternative proposal to rehabilitate the presently defunct Bukit Brown Cemetery in Singapore. The forested municipal cemetery, which houses approximately 100,00 historic Chinese graves, has been left to calculated abandon since it closed in 1973. As an alternative proposal to the cemetery’s impending demolition and clearing, a series of stand-alone, light towers puncture the site, thoughtfully infilling urban nodes of life into an otherwise death-filled place. Comprising crematoria, public housing, and formalised workspaces for on-site tomb keepers, these towers recover forgotten routes through the forest and retain the site ground in an honesty. The strategy transforms the forested cemetery into a hybrid urban landscape. It is a provocation back to living amidst death, and an expression of a different, larger value to inscribe unto the local expanse, that which is commonly and merely perceived as an underutilised, limited resource in land-scarce Singapore.

Chelsea Sia

︎Year 5