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The Igualada Levee
Igualada Cemetery

Going through an archive of half-forgotten bookmarks, we discovered this FORGEMIND.archi.media article on Enric Miralles and Carme Pinós' Igualada Cemetery located near Barcelona, Spain.

Igualada Cemetery

Igualada Cemetery

Igualada Cemetery

You'll read something about “time architecture” and about life journeys and about space-time-metaphysical continuum and about layering of memories and such. But you'll be forgiven if you skip the whole text and simply peruse the photos, which are many, capture perfectly the essence of the site, and unequivocally support what we've long suspected: that the Igualada Cemetery could be a model for an entirely new flood control system, one that is part levee, part diversionary canal, part city of the dead.

Igualada Cemetery

The authors may suspect this as well: “The project is conceived,” they write, “as an earthwork that transforms the surrounding landscape and also as a metaphor for the river of life. A processional route descends from the entrance, where crossed, rusting steel poles which double as gates, proclaim the start of the journey along a winding path where railway sleepers are set into the concrete surface towards the burial area. The route is lined with repeatable concrete loculi forming retaining walls.”

Igualada Cemetery

Igualada Cemetery

Igualada Cemetery

Igualada Cemetery

A landscape of concretized rigidity and suppleness, of permanence and impermanence, protecting the living from surging waters, avalanches and supersonic pyroclastic mud flows while welcoming those it could not save.


Cemeteries as Major Disaster Response Protocol
3 COMMENTS —
  • Anonymous
  • March 4, 2007 at 6:17:00 PM CST
  • stronge place, even more when arriving to the access at the end of an industrial and grey area. mosquitos and butterflies, the only alives around


  • B
  • March 20, 2007 at 4:55:00 PM CDT
  • What is the construction method used in the images shown in this image:

    http://farm1.static.flickr.com/140/399584391_05313ab411_o.jpg

    you know where the stones are stacked in side of the rusty metal mesh...


  • Dieter Janssen
  • February 25, 2010 at 9:43:00 PM CST
  • The stone in cages are gabions tied back and used with pre-cast concrete panels anchored back in to an excavation (I think this site was a gravel pit previously). A beautiful project: http://www.dieterjanssen.com/photography/miralles.html


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