Beatrice Whitworth

The Archive explores how a funeral service could move away from a traditional burial into an archive format where the collective memory of the cemetery is stored digitally. Keeping the ash and the physical body but also the soul and the character in the life of the deceased in the living memory of those who visit. Creating a time capsule that is filled with items that represent the character of the departed. Which has been curated by the family or the deceased themselves. The items are legacy and memory of the identity and soul of the departed. The tubes would be numbered like that of a library archive so anybody who wishes to know about the individuals buried here would be able to visit the archive room and look up the individual’s name.

The architecture of the island moves through a series of forms just like the journeys of the different individuals who visit. The scale changes from very open natural Australian landscape of the island, to very small molecules of the ash of the deceased preserved in the archive. Moving from the cosmos to the intimate architecture of matter.

Bluestone is used throughout the island to represent the journey of the island itself. From bushland to the quarry to the island, Herring Island has journeyed itself through the different phases of its being.