The thought of dealing with one’s own death can be outright terrifying.
Imagining the world continuing on without us is a truly scary thought, but one group of smart designers are hoping to change how we view life and death.
The fantastic team of designers over at Capsula Mundi have been working around the clock on an incredible new burial method. Mere hours after the Italian design company released information about their cool project, it spread through the internet like wildfire.
Rather than a wooden coffin or a cemetery, these designers came up with an entirely new type of design. Rather than embrace the cold, harsh reality of death, they thought of a burial that would lend itself more to life and remembrance.
So what is this incredible new vision they have? It’s an eco-friendly where instead of a tombstone marking your grave, instead a big beautiful lush green tree will grow. It sounds crazy but it’s an incredibly cool concept that has a chance to rock the funeral home industry. Instead of harsh embalming fluids and cemeteries taking up huge plots of land, there will be lush forests for us to memorialize those we’ve lost.
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Imagine instead of destroying big beautiful forests for coffins or to make room for huge cemeteries there could be huge forests made to honor those we’ve lost.
That’s exactly what Italian designers Anna Citelli and Raoul Bretzel believe will be the new direction of burials will be. It’s a morbid subject to be certain, but it’s one they hope we can make a bit more positive on the world.
The main philosophy behind their idea is to connect humans back to the Earth. And their funeral pods are exactly the tool that will allow us to reconnect once again back to mother Earth.
The name Capsula Mundi translates to mean “capsule of the world” and it’s truly a fitting name for this revolutionary idea. Composed of starch-based biodegradable plastic, this egg is designed to house the bodies of those we loved and help create something new and beautiful once again.
Inside the egg is room for a recently deceased person to sit in a fetal position. The egg will then be buried in the ground much like a “seed”. This “seed” will then create something truly beautiful: a big tree.
Instead of a tombstone among hundreds more in a big cemetery, there will be a big, beautiful living tree to represent the loved one we lost. A part of them will continue to live on for hundreds upon hundreds of years in these trees, helping the earth once more.
These pods would decompose naturally in the soil along with the body and provide nutrients to the tree above the soil and allow it to grow and flourish and be incredible like the loved one you lost.
The tree will be chosen by the deceased or by their family, if the deceased person was unable to choose. The available options for trees will be ones that are native to the area where the loved one spent most of their time alive.
Over the course of many years, the burial ground will become a lush forest with many trees, creating a natural forest. The entire forest would be a memorial to the one who was lost. It’s a simple but powerful idea that will help slow down the rapid deforestation of the world and give a memorial far bigger than any tombstone!
The forest memorials will also stand the test of time because they will still be classified as cemeteries and would become nature preserves. Allowing for an ecosystem to thrive full of plants and animals, forever untouched by humans.
The designers also planned to have each burial to be trackable via GPS. This will mean that although there will be no plaques or markers to indicate it, family members of the deceased will always be able to find the tree that holds the soul of their beloved.
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Instead of leaving flowers at a cold gravesite, family members will be able to see the thriving culture that exists purely because of the deceased. A reminder that beauty can come out of the darkest times.
These pictures depict a model of how the designers imagine the Capsula Mundi would look if it were created.
The team are still hashing out the ideas and making sure everything is possible, but they hope to offer Capsula Mundis to many people across the globe very soon. They’ve also been working on developing smaller sized capsules for cremains and beloved pets.
Although the project is still in concept stages, Citelli and Bretzel have big dreams for Capsula Mundi. The pair dream that Capsula Mundi will be used across the world instead of coffins and the use of chemicals for burials.
The pair also want to change the dark tone so many have about death. Death doesn’t always have to be purely about loss..
