Seattle architect designs system to ‘compost our deceased'

A project located in Seattle is developing a system that would decompose human bodies into a rich compost.

The Urban Death Project writes on its website: "[The project] utilizes the process of composting to safely and gently turn our deceased into soil, creating a meaningful, equitable, and ecological urban alternative for the care of the dead."

Its process is called recomposition.

Katrina Spade, founder and executive director of the Urban Death Project, told KPLU in a report over the weekend that she didn't want her last gesture on earth to be a toxic one.

"I've envisioned and designed a system that'll compost our deceased quite simply, and then a new kind of architecture for our cities where we can have a ceremony to say goodbye and come back to and remember and memorialize our dead," Spade said in an interview near Capitol Hill's Volunteer Park and Lakeview Cemetery.

Spade described the facility as a three-story core that stores carbon materials – like woodchips and sawdust – with bodies.

Here's the process that would happen at the facility, according to the website.

1 The deceased may be stored in a refrigerated space for up to 10 days before the ceremony takes place. There is no embalming because decomposition is an important part of the design.

2. Those closest to the deceased meet the body in the shrouding room, where they wrap it in simple linen. Supportive staff are on hand to assist in this process.

3. Mourners enter the facility and walk up to the top of the core where they say goodbye to the deceased at the laying in.

The Urban Death Project says – as an architectural plan – the bodies decompose into a soil-like compost. It’s then used to nourish gardens and city parks.

Spade posted the project on Kickstarter last year, where it reached its goal of more than $75,000.

Cox Media Group