The Columbarium Chapel and Memorial Garden is an internment place
for burial cremains. Today more and more people choose cremation as an
alternative to cemetery plot burial. Cremation is less expensive,
requires less land, and is attractive to a mobile society. Yet many who
seek cremation burial still prefer an internment place that is cared
for by a community that will live on well into the future.
The project is designed as a pay-as-you-go series of
phases. When the first phase is filled, the entire open-air garden
chapel floor will be a surface of bronze niches and the chapel will
seat approximately 50 people for funerals or other special services.
Low rock walls for seating around the garden chapel are foundation
walls for another future phase including a translucent and softly
illuminated polycarbonate wall of burial niches. Another phase of the
garden chapel is to construct a baptismal font and "water wall" for
engraved names in memorial.
The Columbarium is for the entire community. A cabinet in
the polycarbonate wall is accessible from the public garden and offers
a place for members of the community to set memorabilia (flowers,
candles, remembrances), and throughout the garden are places for
sculpture or artwork to designate expressions of loss or grief (war,
events).