Design: Ramon Cordova Gonzalez

Mid the uneasy wanderings of paleolithic man, the dead were the first to have a permanent dwelling: a cavern, a mound marked by a cairn, a collective barrow. These were landmarks to which the living probably returned at intervals, to commune with or placate the ancestral spirits. (…) The city of the dead antedates the city of the living. In one sense, indeed, the city of the dead is the forerunner, almost the core, of every living city. Urban life spans the historic space between the earliest burial ground for dawn man and the final cemetery, the Necropolis, in which one civilization after another has met its end.

Mumford 1961

The city of Merida, in the south-east of Mexico, has an important demand for funerary infrastructure. The existing one not only lacks the capacity to attend the population, but also quality of service and spaces. The site is located next to the city’s ring road. A very noisy and busy area. If this building is meant to be a place of farewell and final rest, how to approach the project within the given circumstances?

The program included a cemetery area. Therefore, the scheme departs from the premise that this open and most vulnerable component had to be positioned as far away from the street as possible in order to avoid the noise. Thus, the building becomes a buffer and a transition that separates the street from the cemetery, the alive from the death.

Since the building works as a threshold, its materiality and the sequence of spaces aim to create an atmosphere that uses life and death as catalysts to promote solitude and reflection. These moments open up different possibilities of understanding and being.

The intense and complex circumstances in which those who have just lost someone find themselves was the departure point for the design and distribution of the funeral rooms where the service takes place. Each room is divided in such a way that as one gets closer to the coffin area the spaces become more private and intimate, giving the possibility not only to adapt the service according to the amount of people that attends, but also for the family to remain apart from the rest if they wish so, to the point where they can even access and exit the building without being seen.