THE SPACES OF THE COLUMBARIUM : MOVING BEYOND THE CEMETERY

Abstract

The transition from cemetery to columbarium in the past few decades has altered the physical landscape of burial grounds drastically and has led to changes in the spatial and spiritual landscape of Chinese religious death beliefs and practices. With national growth and urban planning as a consistent prerogative, the state has made decisions on many counts to displace spaces of the dead for the future of the living and in the displacement of burial spaces from their original sites of burial, so too have the religious practices of the Chinese people been displaced from positions of high priority in their lives. This paper chooses to focus on the burial spaces and final resting places of the Chinese as death plays a key role in Chinese religions such as Buddhism and Taoism. In the process of the State’s pragmatic spatial-cultural organization, the protests against the displacement of traditional burial sites have steadily lessened and the columbarium has mostly replaced the cemetery as the dominant choice for a final resting place. This paper takes the stance that the columbarium is an attempt to balance and retain the cultural significance of one’s final resting place and the goals and ideals of the nation. As such this paper will examine the spaces of various columbaria in Singapore – ranging from the public to private – to see how the spaces and architecture of the columbaria have altered the practices of the Chinese religious death practices. A discussion about the relationship between religion and spatial conceptions, structures and temporal practices will also be carried out.