Headstone for Layered Burial by Lior Rokah-Kor from israel

A headstone designed for burial in layers under the ground and offers a solution to the land shortage in Israel, my homeland.

According to Judaism, the deceased must be buried (and cannot be cremated or embalm).
The most common form of burial in Israel today is in single field graves, which means that every buried has its own burial plot, with a marble headstone monument on it.
In Israel, each year 62 acres of land are being utilized for single field graves. Since Israel's territory is relatively small, there is a constant shortage in burial grounds. In recent years a less area-consuming methods are beginning to be used: burial in floors above the ground, burial in graves inside a wall, and burial in pair field graves.

I choose to solve this shortage of space by means of burial that utilizes subsurface layers, in this method single field grave can accommodate ten burials. I have designed an infrastructure for public cemetery, in which most elements are predefined and manufactured at mass-production level. This burial method is based essentially on the principle of cooperative, in which a group of people choose to share certain elements of their lifestyle, for the purpose of resource saving: instead of driving in a private car > to drive in a public bus, instead of living in a private house > to live in an apartment building.

The headstone monument is made from layers of Corian, on its layers glass and around it a concrete tile. Whenever a person is deceased, the existing Corian layers are placed alongside the headstone, the person is then buried, Corian layers are placed back on the grave with another Corian layer in which the deceased details are embedded. Looking inside through the glass on all the existing layers, sky and clouds are reflected which resemblance the circle of life.

My inspiration for using layers, one symbolizes each deceased, comes from the world of geology, in which one can learn about a layer of stone by looking at its physical characteristics (shape, color, location). The headstone, which is placed on the grave and is slightly larger than it, gives the beholder a sense of floating above the ground. The rising of the layers to the top of the headstone refers and connect to the "cushion" in the classical headstone.

Designed in 2012 as a B.De. student in Shenkar College of design.