Highgate Cemetery Landscape Masterplan is a 75-year design vision for the renewal of the Grade 1 listed burial ground.
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An illustration of the West Cemetery in 2025
Highgate is one of the world’s finest examples of a picturesque cemetery, and has long been home to some of the greatest men and women of London’s history. It is also a working burial ground that is running out of space; and a long-neglected woodland suffering from habitat loss, flooding, subsidence and heritage deterioration. Commissioned by the Highgate Cemetery Trust, a masterplan and 25-year management scheme need to simultaneously safeguard the cemetery’s history as well as equipping it for the future.
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The West Cemetery in 2021
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A series of tools for application to the existing cemetery
Our vision for Highgate Cemetery envisages a place of coexistence for all life and all death - human and non-human, local and global. Karl Marx is joined by the last white rhino; the Victorian common graves are accompanied by mausoleums for stag beetles; and contemporary ecological death practices nourish the earth for future generations.
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Celebration of veteran trees in the East Cemetery
Highgate is a place where nature has coexisted alongside human burial for centuries, but it has done so coincidentally. Our proposal looks to a future of fully integrated natural systems where the cemetery is managed as a circular, zero-waste woodland; to the gradual growth of a future climate-adapted forest; where communities are invited to learn and work with the woodland; and where human death cycles are aligned with ecological life.
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Localised grave removal and memorial retention in the West Cemetery
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Site Plan
We embrace a fully cross-disciplinary approach, working with a diverse team of specialists in sustainability, heritage and the arts to balance the needs of a highly complex site.
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The greenhouse chapel invites alternative commemoration through growth
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Balancing ponds as reflection spaces in the east cemetery
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A cemetery for all species
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Sections showing how the cemetery develops over time
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An illustration of the West Cemetery in 2050
Client | Highgate Cemetery Trust |
Year | 2021 |
Project Value | £10m |
Sector | Public Realm |
Service | Landscape Architecture / Masterplanning |
Collaborators | Dekka / Denis Vickers Ecology / Expedition Engineering / MOLA / Parks Agency / Russell Miller / Something & Son / Stockdale / UCL / Useful Projects |