TNN Death, in Bollywood dramas, invariably meets its elegiac end on a riverside pyre at twilight. Never on an electric or wood furnace in a dreary municipal crematorium, where about 75% of the dead end up in most cities.
Urban crematoria are all function and little form: grim and banal, they have nothing of the sublime beauty of graveyards or the enigma of the Towers of Silence. Interestingly, cities like Coimbatore, Erode and Surat have signature crematoria designed by private architectural firms and widely cited in global architecture magazines. Commissioned typically by charitable trusts that manage these public facilities, they are sleek, unique and fittingly moving.
For Mancini Enterprises, an architectural concern in Chennai popular for its clubs and resorts, the crematorium was a first. It was commissioned by GDK Charity Trust, a non-profit that had built and operated a crematorium on behalf of the Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation in 1992. The facility built then had to be replaced by a new structure that made more room for the living."People who'd attend the last rites couldn't fit into the old crematorium; they'd spill over into the portico," says G Venkatesh -project coordinator at the trust, whose crematorium runs two electric furnaces where around 18 bodies are incinerated daily . The new facility, completed last year, cost Rs 1.5 crore.
A grey cubist structure, resembling an elegant stack of Jenga blocks, the crematorium is spread across two pavilions and gardens that mimic the wanton vegetation of a riverside where cremations traditionally took place. "It is the pavilion and not the furnaces that are central to the design," points out architect Niels Schoenfelder of Mancini Enterprises, who conceptualized a modern, secular space. "The landscape is also fundamental to cremation in India. They used to take place on the open river banks outside a city, but now happen indoors. So we designed two 'gardens' that approximate the wild, natural land scape of riverbanks," he adds.
Several years ago the people of Erode decided that their own dead deserved a dignified send-off. So on cue from a son-of-the-soil surgeon, Dr E K Sagadhevan, they collected Rs 3.5 crore, got the municipal corporation to part with 2.5 acres and a local resident with one, and had Chennai architect Murali Muru gan produce an eye-catching two pyramid complex, the Rotary Rs 3.5 crore, got the municipal corporation to part with 2.5 acres and a local resident with one, and had Chennai architect Murali Muru gan produce an eye-catching two pyramid complex, the Rotary Aathma Modern Crematorium.
"In most crematoria the body is sent to the furnace, the mourners depart and the family is left alone to gather the ashes. I wanted to create a clean, mesmerising space where relatives could wait while the body was burning and listen to soulful music and bhajans," says Murugan, who worked pro bono on the project. "Many in small towns don't have a decent place to keep the body; and in places where flats are small, people erect a pandal on the street for people to pay homage. At Aathma, the body can be brought in straight from the hospital, relieving people from these constraints." R Anandan, 29, a teacher in Erode, cremated her younger brother this January at Aathma.
"It was an improvement from what we had before, when bodies were cremated on the banks of the Cauvery," she says. "We had to pay almost Rs 5,000 before, for firewood, kerosene, diesel, cowdung cakes and to the person who performed the last rites. The undertakers were always drunk, behaved badly and demanded Rs 500 each, and new veshtis. They were blind to our sorrow."
While GDK crematorium charges Rs 750 per use and the one at Erode, Rs 600 (the very poor pay nothing), most civic-run crematoria are otherwise free.
One of the predecessors of the modern, architecture-school-conceived crematoria is perhaps the Ashwinikumar crematorium in Surat, on the river Tapi. Designed by Matharoo Associates in 1998, it was born of a national competition that sought a new incarnation of the crematorium. The design, which fleshed out such esoteric cosmic notions as 'the unknown after death' and `the solitariness of the soul', was such a departure from the norm, it even won UK's Architecithtural Review's Editor's t Choice Award in 2002.
But frills like these are possible only in private crematoria, argues a senior public health officer from the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, which recorded 93,000 cremations last year. "When a private trust builds and runs a crematorium (with license from the civic authority) the sky's the limit, as long as they meet the basic criteria of a crematorium, like providing a mourner's shed, a meditation hall, drinking water facilities and toilets," says the officer who did not want to be named."Remember, a public crematorium is built with public money, and the authorities see no sense in using marble over Kota. Moreover, as government-run crematoria are completely free, there's no room for trimmings."Kota. Moreover, as government-run crematoria are completely free, there's no room for trimmings."
With inputs from Pratiksha Ramkumar in Coimbatore
Urban crematoria are all function and little form: grim and banal, they have nothing of the sublime beauty of graveyards or the enigma of the Towers of Silence. Interestingly, cities like Coimbatore, Erode and Surat have signature crematoria designed by private architectural firms and widely cited in global architecture magazines. Commissioned typically by charitable trusts that manage these public facilities, they are sleek, unique and fittingly moving.
For Mancini Enterprises, an architectural concern in Chennai popular for its clubs and resorts, the crematorium was a first. It was commissioned by GDK Charity Trust, a non-profit that had built and operated a crematorium on behalf of the Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation in 1992. The facility built then had to be replaced by a new structure that made more room for the living."People who'd attend the last rites couldn't fit into the old crematorium; they'd spill over into the portico," says G Venkatesh -project coordinator at the trust, whose crematorium runs two electric furnaces where around 18 bodies are incinerated daily . The new facility, completed last year, cost Rs 1.5 crore.
A grey cubist structure, resembling an elegant stack of Jenga blocks, the crematorium is spread across two pavilions and gardens that mimic the wanton vegetation of a riverside where cremations traditionally took place. "It is the pavilion and not the furnaces that are central to the design," points out architect Niels Schoenfelder of Mancini Enterprises, who conceptualized a modern, secular space. "The landscape is also fundamental to cremation in India. They used to take place on the open river banks outside a city, but now happen indoors. So we designed two 'gardens' that approximate the wild, natural land scape of riverbanks," he adds.
Several years ago the people of Erode decided that their own dead deserved a dignified send-off. So on cue from a son-of-the-soil surgeon, Dr E K Sagadhevan, they collected Rs 3.5 crore, got the municipal corporation to part with 2.5 acres and a local resident with one, and had Chennai architect Murali Muru gan produce an eye-catching two pyramid complex, the Rotary Rs 3.5 crore, got the municipal corporation to part with 2.5 acres and a local resident with one, and had Chennai architect Murali Muru gan produce an eye-catching two pyramid complex, the Rotary Aathma Modern Crematorium.
"In most crematoria the body is sent to the furnace, the mourners depart and the family is left alone to gather the ashes. I wanted to create a clean, mesmerising space where relatives could wait while the body was burning and listen to soulful music and bhajans," says Murugan, who worked pro bono on the project. "Many in small towns don't have a decent place to keep the body; and in places where flats are small, people erect a pandal on the street for people to pay homage. At Aathma, the body can be brought in straight from the hospital, relieving people from these constraints." R Anandan, 29, a teacher in Erode, cremated her younger brother this January at Aathma.
"It was an improvement from what we had before, when bodies were cremated on the banks of the Cauvery," she says. "We had to pay almost Rs 5,000 before, for firewood, kerosene, diesel, cowdung cakes and to the person who performed the last rites. The undertakers were always drunk, behaved badly and demanded Rs 500 each, and new veshtis. They were blind to our sorrow."
While GDK crematorium charges Rs 750 per use and the one at Erode, Rs 600 (the very poor pay nothing), most civic-run crematoria are otherwise free.
One of the predecessors of the modern, architecture-school-conceived crematoria is perhaps the Ashwinikumar crematorium in Surat, on the river Tapi. Designed by Matharoo Associates in 1998, it was born of a national competition that sought a new incarnation of the crematorium. The design, which fleshed out such esoteric cosmic notions as 'the unknown after death' and `the solitariness of the soul', was such a departure from the norm, it even won UK's Architecithtural Review's Editor's t Choice Award in 2002.
But frills like these are possible only in private crematoria, argues a senior public health officer from the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, which recorded 93,000 cremations last year. "When a private trust builds and runs a crematorium (with license from the civic authority) the sky's the limit, as long as they meet the basic criteria of a crematorium, like providing a mourner's shed, a meditation hall, drinking water facilities and toilets," says the officer who did not want to be named."Remember, a public crematorium is built with public money, and the authorities see no sense in using marble over Kota. Moreover, as government-run crematoria are completely free, there's no room for trimmings."Kota. Moreover, as government-run crematoria are completely free, there's no room for trimmings."
With inputs from Pratiksha Ramkumar in Coimbatore
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