"Given the memorial capacities of architecture, it cannot be coincidence that in many of the world's cultures, the earliest and most significant works have been funerary."
I recently ran across this idea in The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Boton. Although time may erase names and dates from funerary monuments of all kinds, Boton goes on to say, "what remains...is their eloquent ability to deliver the message common to all funerary architecture, from the marble tomb to rough wooden roadside shrine - namely, "Remember".
The desire to remember unites our building for the living and the dead. As we put up tombs, markers and mausoleums to memorialize lost loved ones, so do we construct and decorate buildings to help us recall the important but figurative parts of ourselves."
Photos of Greenwood Cemetary, Detroit.
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