Landscape of Memories Ingmars Ingus Upatnieks Bachelor’s Studio Project
Death and Religion in the Contemporary City
Scale: North East UK and the Society.
North East as the Birthplace of Christianity and Mushroom Burials There are three broader contentions underpinning this project.
2. Death and the Contemporary City
1. Religion and the Contemporary City
“The Magnificent Seven” Cemeteries of London with their elaborate Victorian age headstones and picturesque landscaping were spaces for leisure and public funerary culture. Mortality was encountered in a garden. Since then, headstones have become more somber and the cemetery has turned into a characterless enclosure pushed towards the city limits. Death is hidden and our relationship with mortality is a distant one. The Museum of Religion is situated in a new funerary landscape created within the city park of Jesmond Dene, which reestablishes the place of death and memorial in the contemporary city. Memory and mortality must be returned to city’s consciousness before society accepts their contingency and the powerful juxtaposition of sacred and profane places is lost forever.
The North East of England is a place of great religious significance. Here, the Lindisfarne Gospels were written and the teachings of St Cuthbert and the writings of St Bede spread the Christian message across the Isle. The region is home to a number of significant religious sites along historic routes of Pilgrimage. In the 15th century, the streets of Newcastle were flooded with pilgrims eager to pray within the narrow walls of St Mary’s Chapel near to the Jesus Mound, the site of a famous apparition, and kneel before its sacred relics. Today it is a forgotten ruin and symptomatic of the decline of religion across both the region and the United Kingdom. Twenty Christian churches are abolished yearly leaving a collection of ecclesiastical fragments scattered across the country in various states of decay. This project is a protest against forgetting and seeks to preserve memory through architectural and landscape interventions in Jesmond Dene, incorporating the ruined chapel into a new composition remembering its significance.
3. Mushroom Burial. An environmentally conscious final homage. Cremation releases greenhouse gasses as do metal coffins and concrete retaining walls used in traditional burial, whilst the Western society’s beliefs reject any re-development on the vast areas taken up by derelict funerary landscape. Current research by American scientist Jae Rhim Lee has developed the idea of a burial suit where mushroom spores are incorporated into the fabric allowing the decomposing body to enhance the quality of the soil and embrace the never-ending cycle in nature where death creates new life. In this way, the project not only reevaluates the architecture and landscapes we design to commemorate death, but it questions our contemporary cremation and ritualistic practices, suggesting a new set of rituals based around a sustainable idea of burial.
Mapping the Journey of Lindisfarne Gospels. Left: Mapping the artifacts and spaces holding a memory about North East as the birthplace of Christianity in the UK. Collected in the Museum of Religion.
Scale: Jesmond Dene.
Found Landscape Condition Densely Wooded Landscape Long walks through Jesmond Dene to gather the essence of the park. One moves amongst the heavy roots of the trees whilst their dense canopies cover the park in eternal dusk. And for every heap of light finding its way through a story is revealed. There lies a short glimpse of a gleaming white wedding dress and a derelict fragment of architecture. Peculiar moments scattered across a wild landscape. The composite drawing merges a measured survey about the picturesque history of the park and a poetic survey about the conditions this heavily wooded landscape offers.
The found landscape condition of Jesmond Dene.
Peculiar glimpses amongst the trees in Jesmond Dene.
The tree canopies of Jesmond Dene. A heavily wooded landscape. Left: Composite Drawing. A measured survey about the tree species introduced by Lord Armstrong and a poetic survey about the conditions of the landscape.
Scale: Three Controlled Ruins.
The Forgotten and Overlooked Memories of the Ruins Story Drawing A hospice once stood just north of St Mary’s Chapel for pilgrims streaming from across the country in their eagerness to pray within the narrow walls that hold a memory about the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary, drink the miraculous healing waters from the well and kneel before the sacred relics brought from the Holy Land. Today the oldest existing ecclesiastical building in Newcastle has been largely forgotten. The feeling of the site, the forgotten and overlooked stories of the ruins and a dream about their spatiality, pieced together from multiple mediums, are curated into a single, intuitive strand of thought with the Story Drawing. Screenshots from Adam Banks’ film Armstrong’s Banqueting Hall. (2006)
Screenshots from Walter Reeve’s film Jesmond Dene. (1951)
The forgotten stories of St Mary’s Chapel.
Reference images for the story drawing. Overlaying multiple memories. Left: Story Drawing. Curating the forgotten and overlooked memories of the Banqueting Hall. A dream about spatial sequence.
Journey through the landscape as proposed. Scale: The Site.
Landscape Storing a Memory A new Landscape Condition The landscape becomes a cemetery and two journeys lead through it. A collection of peculiar white sand-cast concrete buildings are scattered across the landscape, a memory about mortals they store. The body travels through them in preparation for the mushroom burial. Over time gleaming white burial caves will sprawl around the funerary architecture creating a unique landscape condition across the site. A memory about North East as the birthplace of religion lines the second journey. Amongst the burial caves landscape offers glimpses of surviving physical memories of Christian churches. One day the cemetery will disappear without a trace leaving the landscape to blossom. Only the ecclesiastical fragments forever drown in the meadow and brushwood.
Igualada Cemetery Enric Miralles (1994, Spain)
Zinc Mine Museum Peter Zumthor (2016, Norway)
Woodland Cemetery Gunnar Asplund & Sigurd Lewerentz (1940, Sweden)
A memory about a mortal stored across a landscape as a series of moments of raised consciousness during a journey.
The constructed devotional landscape condition of Birka. An undulating pastureland and woodland composed of irregular mounds, dotted with large cairns and standing stones. Left: A new landscape condition. Glistening white mushroom burial caves line the two journeys through the park.
Glimpses Amongst Densely Wooded Landscape
Scale: Building in the Landscape.
Architectural Language The memory about a native woodland, once roamed by barefoot pilgrims in search of the Rock of Apparition, was stored beneath a picturesque landscape re-constructed by Lord Armstrong. Today the ruinous nave of the chapel survives as a gatehouse into a park where the altered landscape with its architectural ruins is being re-colonised by a wild surge of nature. Heavy and fractured burial architecture sinks amongst the dense woodland and an organic funghi wall, somehow reminiscent of the Victorian age headstones, pierces the steep valley. It marks the burial for thirty years before the earth crashes over and finishes the cycle of the body. A few years later a sapling might be the only evidence of the grave that once laid there and a new cave is dug out nearby. The family members continue visiting the departed and bring candles to the public stibadium grotto in remembrance.
Plaster cast example of funghi burial cave, somehow reminiscent of the Victorian age headstones.
Discovering the architectural language through models.
Touchstone. An object with its weight intended to store the feeling of being amongst the dense woodland and ruins of Jesmond Dene. A new life in the form of a plant stems upwards from the ashes and ruins.
Left: 1:200 Plaster cast Landscape of Memories.
Journey through the landscape as proposed. Scale: Mushroom Labs.
Jewels along a Journey The Contemporary Grotto A rough-sawn granite slab path leads through the wild landscape. Amongst the woods, there are glimpses of ecclesiastical fragments and sand-cast concrete architecture. Sometimes revealed, sometimes concealed, experienced differently in summer and winter. Suddenly the full structure emerges from the hill and one can read a collection of fragments from the traditional devotional picturesque language - the grotto, Victorian age headstones, vaulted interiors, porte-cochere, stibadium – curated and re-interpreted in the burial architecture. Hundreds of types of ore and rocks were gathered in Alexander Pope’s Twickenham garden grotto. A picturesque, carefully constructed mine whose spatial sequence somehow reminds of the ideas of Enfilade – the deeper inside the grotto one is invited, the rougher the wall treatment becomes.
Top Left: Isle of the Dead, (Arnold Böcklin, 1880) Top Right: Tombstone in Abney Park Cemetery, London (Ludwig M Brickmann, 2005) Left: South Window of Tintern Abbey (Frederick Calvert, 1815)
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2. Wall Build-up: 1. Extensive Green Roof Build-up: 200 mm pre-cast reinforced concrete panel, Sedum planting in Evagro sedum mat white pigment 130 mm soil-less substrate 150 mm Bronx MRC Aerogel insulation 1 mm Icopal filter fleece 1.5 mm Proofex 3000 DPM 60 mm Evadrain drainage mat 250-500mm in-situ sand-cast concrete, white Expanded shale protection and storage fleece ICB single-ply membrane pigmented, polystyrine infill 150 mm Bronx MRC Aerogel insulation 3. Floor Build-up: 1,5 mm Proofex 3000 DPM 6mm slip-resistant resin finish with decorative 200mm Pre-cast reinforced concrete panel, quartz aggregates white pigmented 75 mm cement screed with underfloor heating 40 mm Bronx MRC Aerogel insulation, spray pipes, 250 mm centres painted 75mm Bronx MRC Aerogel insulation 1.5 mm DPM layer 300 mm pre-cast reinforced concrete slab
Vaulted grotto interior. Pre-fabricated sand-cast panels of entrance lobby. Mushroom Lab. 1. Grow Mushrooms 2. Sculpt Tombstones 3. Staff Room 4. Air Shower 5. Laboratory 6. Prepare Substrate
7. Plant room 8. Unisex WC 9. Disabled WC 10. Changing Room 11. Shower 12. Cleaner’s Store 13. Stibadium
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Sand-cast plaster samples. 8
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A collection of glistening white plaster fragments.
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Left: Mushroom Laboratory. Re-imagining the traditional devotional picturesque language. Wall treatment reflects the stages of a mushroom growth cycle.
Journey through the landscape as proposed. Scale: St Mary’s Chapel.
Exhibiting Physical Memories about Christian Architecture Re-using St Mary’s Chapel as Sculptor’s Workshop Today one steps into the landscape through the ruinous nave of St Mary’s Chapel and the lust of nature in summer is tamed in a greyishyellow sandstone frame. But for three months, as the winter comes and removes the colors from nature, a deep green and brown artifact appears amongst the dense woodland. Four ruinous stone walls preserve the stories of the chapel. To me, they tell only a church outline. The eastern wall of the Scheduled Monument is partially demolished for re-using part of the chapel as a sculptor’s workshop. A place where sculptors carve the surviving physical fragments from churches abolished in the North East in search for religious memories stored in these pieces of masonry. These artifacts of Christian architecture then fill the landscape around the central sculpture - the St Mary’s Chapel. Its empty shell is again filled with life and some long-forgotten stories are re-told.
St Mary’s Chapel. Summer 2020 The last open coffin ceremony is taking place. White fabric trembles in the wind above the heads of the mourners and the visitor recalls a wedding dress spotted earlier on the other side of the park. Over time it becomes recognised as a plea for privacy. The landscape belongs to the family of the deceased for the moment. A timber roof structure slows down the decay of the ruins. The pinewood is acetylated and the greyish-yellow timber meets the sandstone walls whilst the deep structure is somehow reminiscent of the surrounding tree canopies. Later in the evening, the first grave will be dug. The landscape now stores a memory about a mortal.
St Mary’s Chapel. Winter 2100 A fragment of the St Stephen Church has just arrived to the sculptor’s workshop in the chapel. Lord Armstrong laid its foundation stone in 1868. It had sat redundant in Low Elswick (Newcastle) since 1984. A sculpture to remind about one of the potential locations of the original St Mary’s Well will be carved from it. The landscape has been filled up with glistening white mushroom burial caves. A new landscape condition has been crafted. The acetylated pinewood structure has weathered to an ever so slightly greenish light gray. The chapel glistens green.
Landscape next to St Mary’s Chapel. Summer 2500 All the mycelium burial caves have deteriorated and returned to the earth. All the bodies have been fully decomposed by mushrooms. The cemetery has fulfilled its role and disappeared without a trace leaving the landscape to blossom. Only the ecclesiastical fragments, alongside glimpses of sand-cast concrete, forever drown in the meadow and brushwood. The timber roof structure has reached its lifespan and been removed. St Mary’s Chapel is again deteriorating faster. Quattro Stagioni Cy Twombly (1993-5)
Curation as Architectural Strategy A Museum of Religion
Journey through the landscape as proposed. Scale: Banqueting Hall.
Upon entering a church one is somehow elevated a bit closer to heaven. Whilst remaining skeptical about abandoned masonry shells telling divine stories there is no denying the unique spatial story they tell. A memory about monks carrying Lindisfarne Gospels from Holy Island to Durham is stored in the churches they visited but somehow a reverse memory, about being inside these structures, is embodied in the gospels themselves. The Museum of Religion spatially re-tells this story. The proportions of the spaces holding a memory about this journey have been overlayed over the existing floor plans when developing the floor plans for the new home of Gospels and the sculptor’s workshop. The religious artifacts are exhibited in spiritually uplifting spaces somehow reminiscent of the churches they are gathered from.
Composing floor plans by overlaying spaces holding a memory about the journey of the Gospels over the found condition.
Designing through a 1:100 development model. The realities of the site begin shaping the spaces.
Left: Axonometric of the journey through the Museum of Religion.
Journey through the landscape as proposed. Scale: Banqueting Hall.
A Spiritually Uplifting Space Composite Drawing When stepping inside a church the man is elevated closer to heaven. The world is left behind the heavy walls, the structural rhythm calms the mind and the carefully filtered light flows from somewhere high above. In Jesmond Dene, one moves between the heavy roots and a filtered light flows through the dense tree canopies. And every once in a while there are moments, just glimpses when fragments of architecture glisten through the leaves. My architecture attempts to exhibit the religious artifacts in spaces where the spatial experience of being inside Jesmond Dene is overlayed with the uplifting experience of stepping inside a church.
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Under the entrance portico of the stibadium.
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Museum of Religion looking from the bridge. Photo by Adam Dixon, 2019.
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Inside the deep structure of the gallery space in Museum of Religion. Water gathers on the roof.
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The spatial progression from St Mary’s Chapel to the River. Museum of Religion section AB.
Room sitting on the water. The prepared body awaits family. The hum of waterfall fills the space.
1. Public Entrance. Foyer. Information desk. 2. Private Entrance. 3. Staff Entrance. 4. Gift Shop. 5. Storage. 6. Up to Staff Offices. 7. Gallery Space.
8. Dance hall. Celebration of Life. 9. Gospels Exhibition Space. 10. Cafe. 11. Tool Store. Changing Room. 12. Room sitting on the water. 13. Last Open Coffin Ceremony. 14. Sculptor’s Workshop.
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Heading towards the Lindisfarne Gospels exhibition space in the Museum of Religion.
Journey through the landscape as proposed. Scale: Banqueting Hall.
Three Layers of Construction Sand-cast Concrete and Deep Structure amongst the Trees of Jesmond Dene Preserving the spatial memory about the journey of Lindisfarne Gospels through borrowing the three constructional pillars of church architecture. The found ruin or contemporary concrete wall follows the traditional proportion and separates from the world whilst a lightweight timber roof structure filters the light and traces a historic structural rhythm. The reconstructed ecclesiastical spatiality is then placed in a dense woodland through borrowing and intensifying the qualities of the surrounding landscape. Water gathers on the roof and beams of light, managing to find their way through the dense woodland, reflect into the space flooding it with a soft, filtered light. Glimpses of religious artifacts glisten amongst the deep roof structure as they do amongst the tree canopies on the other side of the glass. A continuous journey through a wild, curated landscape - natural Jesmond Dene woodland merges with the constructed gallery spaces and sculpture gardens.
Interaction between the deep structure and light shapes the character of the Thorncrown Chapel by Euine Fay Jones. Varnished timber intensifies this exchange.
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Gallery Space Internal Perspective The head of St Aidan of Lindisfarne reaches into the deep roof structure whilst the body, enclosed within dozens of crosses, rests in one of the sculpture gardens. The timber battens never catch the light the same way twice, manifesting the diurnal and seasonal changes in the landscape. In sunny days a varnished pine floor and bronze structural accents glisten, a bit like the river nearby.
Gallery Space Technical Section CD 1. Wall Build-up: 200 mm pre-cast reinforced concrete panel, white pigment, bronze tie cap 150 mm thermal insulation 1.5 mm DPM layer 250 mm in-situ concrete, sandcast finish when above ground
2. Floor Build-up: 20 mm pine planks, varnished 75 mm cement screed with underfloor heating pipes, 250 mm centres 150 mm thermal insulation 1.5 mm DPM layer 300 mm pre-cast reinforced concrete slab 100 mm thermal insulation 150 mm gravel fill
3. Roof Build-up: 20 mm pine plywood sheet, varnished 120 mm thermal insulation 1.5 mm DPM layer 20 mm pine plywood sheet 50 mm square timber battens, 600 mm centres 0.7 mm corrugated zinc roofing sheets
Gallery Space External Elevation A clinically engineered timber and glass structure stems upwards from the ruins and declares the extents of the burial landscape upon arrival. Amongst the woodland it reduces to a serene backdrop reflecting the burial caves and the tree canopies whilst the deep structure extends the densely wooded landscape into the spaces.