MAUSOLEO MEMORIAL DIGNIDAD
Mausoleo Memorial Dignidad is an initiative of “Gente de la Calle” Foundation. Its aim is to provide funeral units and a space of remembrance for people who died living on the streets of Santiago de Chile—the first of its kind in Latin America.
Faced with the impossibility of acquiring a conventional plot of land, even in the northern sector of the complex, the architects suggested building the mausoleum on an existing structure to avoid the cost of land. The project rehabilitates an abandoned elevated construction of 100 meters long at the northwest edge of the Cemetery, overlooking the urban horizon of the capital. This metaphor of the harsh urban condition—where these homeless people spent their last days—contrasts with the addition of a light metal roof, which shades and allows this space to become a place of contemplation and relaxation in an extensive funerary complex that lacks this basic facility. Street and roof.
Avoiding any demolition of the existing building, two parallel and opposing rows of columbaria also function as benches for the living, adding up to 372 available units. The vertical planes of the new roof embrace the brackets that protrude from the original pavilion. The section of all the elements is the same (40x40x3mm) for greater economy. The selected roofing material is the most common in the national market, corrugated galvanized aluminum 3.5mm thick. The color black was used for its allusion to death in Western culture, as well as to contrast with the texture and layers of history accumulated on the pre-existing tomb pavilion.
Ordinary materials, installed with conventional construction solutions, repeated over 100 linear meters manage to create a space suitable for contemplation.
