Hanami, literally "enjoy the bloom," is a Japanese term that tells a story of delicacy, transience and fragility, but at the same time also speaks of beauty, of great joy, of lushness of life and most of all of rebirth. More than any other, this ancient traditional practice survived through the ages, makes clear and enhance the intimate and sacred relationship that exists between man and nature. A concept extremely important in Japanese culture that recalls the whole human ancestral history, experienced at a spiritual and totally personal level.
This great sensibility for life is inextricably connected to an awareness of death that is never perceived as a final and definitive stage, but rather as a time of transformation and regeneration, beyond any possible religious beliefs. For this reason the natural world perfectly embodies this concept of transience, especially supported by peculiar aesthetic philosophies such as wabi-sabi (侘寂) and mono no aware (物の哀れ), which if on the one hand they emphasize the impermanence of things on the other confirm how those same things, once ended their lifecycle, they become even more precious, more beautiful and more full of meaning in their wonderful and natural imperfection.
These values do not only exist in so-called sacred places, full of history and traditions, but also in the every day life of big avant-garde cities such as Tokyo itself. In this totally artificial environment, in which the living space not only for nature but also for the man himself is now almost non-existent, the real challenge is to create a place that can summarize all of these concepts. This means being aware that life and death are two sides of the same coin -the existence- and the permanence of a human being, with all its natural fragility, it can be of inspiration to the conception of new urban and spatial strategies which take account from the very beginning of the possible future life of a building, in this case.
The project here proposed attempts to take charge of all of these concepts, trying to give an answer to these critical challenges. Taking full advantage of the duality between natural and artificial it aims to analyze and re-invent the subject of the cemetery through the tradition of the place, literally “watching” it from a new perspective. Not only it offers an innovative vertical modular expansion system, but using a valuable compositive and constructive strategy it aims at promoting a fluid, continuous and potentially endless process of regeneration that is spatial, functional and urban at the same time. This results in the use of a very special funeral system with an high symbolic value which reincarnates in itself all the principles and spiritual values already explained, especially the continuous flow of the life cycle of a living being.
Allowing the deceased, after the inevitable cremation, to experience a new lifecycle which literally return him to nature, this system gives real vibrant life to the city that hosts it.
The cemetery, defying every stereotype and gaining again from the Japanese tradition, becomes an interactive structure, a park and a temple and an intimate sacred and public place at the same time. A place to see grow and bloom life, once again.
