7.11.2011

Good Mourning

Margaux Ruyant, a student at the DSK ISD International School of Design in India, surely agrees with me that stellar design belongs everywhere. In fact, I was recently walking through the cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts where Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau are buried. I commented to Vincent, my boyfriend, that cemeteries were in need of a design reboot. Margaux Ruyant to the rescue! "POETREE is a funeral urn that evolves over time as a companion through the stages of mourning. The ashes are placed in the urn and are covered with soil. The family takes the urn home and plants a tree in it. When the tree is big enough, it is time to plant the urn in a garden or a park. Eventually the urn, which is made of a biodegradable material and ceramic, will disappear, and only the tree and the ceramic top will remain, just like a gravestone." Form and function, all rolled into one. Well done!

~JP Pullos

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