2016 CEMETERY
CEMETERY
The project is a territorial adaptation of the so-called Cimitero delle 366 Fosse (Cemetery of 366 Graves), built by Ferdinando Fuga in 1762. The building was part of the ambitious construction program promoted by Carlo di Borbone to address the great number of the poor in the city of Naples. Its name derived from the number of mass graves, of which there was one for each day of the year, including the 366th day of Leap Years.
The architecture of the Cemetery of 366 Graves is scaled 5.000 times and deformed by the geography of the Strait of Sicily. It frames a portion of Mediterranean Sea measuring 400 by 400 kilometers, comprised between Libia, Tunisia and the southern coast of Sicily. The architectural and geographical scales ambiguously overlap, and the logic of Fuga’s proto-Enlinghtment machine is adapted to the contemporary geo-political scenario.
The Cemetery is a solid archive – or better, the diagram – of a population. Its function is not merely hygienic, but also statistical; it is about not only what the cemetery contains, but also what it will contain in the future, what is still mere potential. Any trace of rite is erased from the event of death, which is dealt with according to purely logistical concerns. The scary rationality of the Cemetery works against oblivion.
contribution to the exhibition: 30 architects
Pavillon de l’Arsenal, Paris 14th December 2016 – 28th February 2017
collaborators: Arin Alia, Roxani Maragkoudaki, Eugenio Nuzzo, Giuseppe Cirillo
photos: Louis De Belle