An Urban Response to Traditional Burial

Katrina Spade is an architecture school graduate and the creator of a concept she’s called the Urban Death Project, an ecological approach to burial aimed at dense cities.

The Urban Death Project proposes fast, coffin-free composting -- in which our bodies would be laid over each other, separated by layers of nitrogen and carbon-rich materials, to decompose into a rich soil.

Sounds unceremonious -- even yucky? Not, says Spade, if the composting facility also serves as a “sacred space” for a new kind of celebration of life.

Spade’s idea started out as a school project and has turned into a Kickstarter campaign to fund the next design stage. Katrina has already garnered over a thousand supporters and beaten her $75,000 goal -- shy of her fundraising deadline this Thursday.

DnA talks to Katrina about the Urban Death Project and how she went from architecture to decay.