Celebration of life in South Canberra
TCL and Place Laboratory have designed a cemetery park for South Canberra, offering, “a world class, positive visitor experience that encourages the celebration of life.”
Southern Memorial Park is a sympathetic development in the Tuggeranong region, embracing the site’s natural topography.
With all three public cemeteries in the Australian Capital Territory nearing capacity, a, “non-denominational cemetery set within an Australian bushland aesthetic”, is desperately necessary.
Southern Memorial Park is in South Canberra. Image credit - Place Laboratory and TCL.
The masterplan for a, “bush cemetery for the bush capital”, offers a long-term capacity of around 30,000 plots comprising of 22,000 traditional burial and 8,000 natural burial plots. The total burial capacity of Southern Memorial Park would be approximately 43,600 burials over 100 years.
Different internment options are offered to meet the ACT population’s different religious, ethnic and cultural needs, including a mausoleum, memorial lawn, dedicated plots with memorial masonry, and natural burials.
An outdoor chapel, memorial and function halls, and a naturally formed amphitheatre in the northern gully allow for varied funeral services.
Traditional burial areas will be ‘garden rooms’ or ‘bush clearings’, enclosed by native shrubs and connected by walking trails. The upper western slopes will be revegetated and designated natural burial spaces, and areas with the most intact remnant vegetation, and cultural heritage sites, will be protected and largely undeveloped.
Commemorative monuments and plaques may be placed in bush clearings and garden rooms, on park furniture and along planted walkways, allowing for the memorialisation of ashes.
With all three public cemeteries in ACT nearing capacity, a non-denominational cemetery set within an Australian bushland aesthetic was needed .Image credit - Place Laboratory and TCL.
Proposed wetlands will become a landscape feature while also providing a habitat for native frogs, wading birds and other wildlife. They will assist in water quality treatment, taking runoff and filtering pollutants before harvesting the water and storing it in tanks for irrigation.
According to the masterplan, “these ephemeral waterways and wetlands will celebrate the landscape character of the site and enrich the park as wildlife habitat and visitor experience.”
The landscape is designed in response to the limited availability of irrigation water. Plant selection is based on drought tolerance and suitability for the local conditions, and themed planting avoids large areas of sameness.
Southern Memorial Park’s plants emphasise the flora of the Australian bush, focusing on colours suitable for a memorial park setting.
Southern Memorial Park is a sympathetic development in the Tuggeranong region which embraces the site’s natural topography. Image credit - Place Laboratory and TCL.
Planned public art is an opportunity to acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples as the traditional custodians of Canberra, and the designers also acknowledge the cultural history and local fire ecology of the site.
The ACT Government released a draft masterplan for community consultation earlier this year.
The original masterplan, was commissioned in 2012 by the ACT and Canberra Cemeteries to provide ongoing land allocation, design certainty, operational and financial frameworks for implementation over the next 20 years.