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Fontanelle Crematorium: A Passage Through Ritual and Erosion

Project details

Programme
Unit Unit 8
Year 3
Award
  • Year 3 Portfolio Prize
  • First Class Honours

Nestled within the voids of Naples’ Fontanelle Cave, this project proposes a funeral home and crematorium that emerges from geological irregularities rather than imposing upon them. Drawing from Yeoryia Manolopoulou’s Architecture of Chance, the design embraces erosion, decay, and adaptation, treating architecture as an evolving presence. Through metal, stone, and clay, it negotiates permanence and transformation in response to the shifting nature of Neapolitan yellow tuff. Spaces form through cycles of subtraction and accretion, revealing rituals of passage through temperature, texture, and light. Heat seeps into the porous stone, and shafts of filtered light choreograph the mourners’ path, allowing the architecture to transform, adapt, and erode in dialogue with the cave. It becomes both a vessel for memory and a material record of time’s erosion.

Plan and Section

Fragment Model of the Crematorium and Aluminium Casting Workshop

Exterior View

Sand Cast Mould and Aluminium Casts

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The Bartlett
Summer Show 2025
26 June – 13 July
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