Grief Landscape

Abstract

This thesis studies the possibilities of a rural industrial landscape at the end of its life by utilizing a cemetery as the programmatic solution to the empty wasteland. The cemetery requires large land areas, usually on the city’s outskirts. Places for burials and ceremonies. A piece of land filled with winding paths, benches, and trees. This thesis will focus on the meeting of the rough and dehumanized and the calm and human emotion of grief. The industrial site is a 460’000 sqm quarry in Nittedal on the periphery of both Oslo and Lillestrøm. It has been and is the site for gravel extraction. It consists of three levels of bare rock up to 18 meters high. The quarry is a dusty machine space with no resemblance from the green forest that used to lie there. But one day, it will no longer be possible to extract more materials from the quarry. This thesis starts at the end of the quarry’s life. The architectural, poetic, and landscape potential in the site is there. All that remains is to manage to grab it.