All As One: Where Death Becomes Soil and Architecture Becomes Forest

What if a building could die, decompose, and feed the very ground it stands on? ALL AS ONE proposes exactly that: a memorial architecture in Shanghai constructed entirely from mushroom mycelium, designed to dissolve over time as the human remains it houses transform into fertile soil. The building does not commemorate death so much as it participates in it, collapsing the distinction between structure and ecosystem, monument and mulch.

Designed by Başak Elgin, the project confronts a real spatial crisis. Shanghai's dense, immigrant-rich population is running out of room for traditional afterlife rituals. Cremation, still the dominant practice, contributes significantly to carbon emissions. Elgin's response is a biophilic landscape that replaces cremation with 'Recompose,' a process that converts human remains into nutrient-rich soil within a month, and houses the entire cycle inside a structure that is itself biodegradable. The result is a place where mourning, ecology, and urban planning converge.

A Fog-Wrapped Canopy That Reads as Terrain, Not Building

From the air, ALL AS ONE barely registers as architecture. The aerial view reveals undulating planted roof canopies dissolving into morning fog, their organic contours indistinguishable from a patch of wild terrain grafted into Shanghai's urban grid. The site plan confirms the strategy: cellular green roof formations occupy less than 50% of the ground area, leaving generous open space between the structure's organic lobes and the surrounding street blocks. Outer edges are shaped to respond to urban traffic flow, so the building integrates into the city's infrastructure rather than barricading itself behind cemetery walls.

This is a deliberate rejection of the traditional burial ground as fenced enclosure. By keeping the footprint porous and the roofline low, Elgin ensures that the memorial landscape functions as public green space. Visitors can walk through it without knowing they are passing over a place of recomposition, and that ambiguity is the point: death is not sequestered but woven into everyday urban life.

Branching Vaults and Hexagonal Skylights as Spatial Ritual

Beneath the planted canopy, the architecture reveals its interior logic. Arching roof surfaces covered in autumn foliage frame hexagonal skylights that punch light down into the spaces below. The effect at dusk is theatrical: warm sky visible through geometry, surrounded by living vegetation. These skylights are not decorative; they regulate the interior microclimate and channel daylight to the planted floors beneath, sustaining the ecological loop that the recomposition process initiates.

Moving deeper into the structure, branching forms covered in red and green vegetation create a network of pathways that feel less like corridors and more like forest trails. A solitary figure walks through one such passage, dwarfed by the planted mass overhead. The layered formations extend below the surface, creating isolated yet interconnected spaces that accommodate diverse mourning traditions. Shanghai is home to multiple faiths, and rather than segregating rituals by belief, the design provides a permeable layout where different practices can coexist without collision.

Mycelium as Material, Medium, and Message

The interior perspectives are perhaps the most striking. White branching structural members rise from the ground like bone or coral, supporting a planted canopy overhead while figures move through tall grass at floor level. The material is mycelium: entirely biodegradable, waste-free, and capable of being grown rather than manufactured. Each structural unit starts as an individual cell and merges over time into a cohesive whole, mirroring the project's core thesis about interconnectedness. The building literally grows, and it is designed to eventually decompose, feeding the very plants it supports.

The soil produced through human recomposition feeds these interior landscapes, which evolve as new remains are processed and new growth emerges. Visitors who return over months or years witness their loved ones' remains become flourishing vegetation. The balance between growth and decay maintains ecological stability, and the architecture itself is part of that equation. When a mycelium panel degrades, it enriches the substrate. Nothing is permanent, and nothing is wasted.

Why This Project Matters

ALL AS ONE takes biophilic design to its logical extreme. Most projects in this genre stop at green roofs and natural light. Elgin pushes further by making the building itself a participant in biological cycles: constructed from living material, fueled by human decomposition, and designed to disappear. The choice of Shanghai as a site grounds the concept in genuine urgency. With a growing population and shrinking urban space, the city cannot sustain conventional burial or even cremation at its current environmental cost. The Recompose method, which eliminates harmful emissions entirely, offers a credible alternative.

What elevates the project beyond environmental engineering is its spatial intelligence. The layered, below-grade formations, the porous urban footprint, the branching interior pathways: these are not just efficient, they produce genuinely moving spaces for grief, reflection, and gradual acceptance. Architecture that decays alongside memory, and regenerates alongside hope, is a powerful proposition. Elgin's work suggests that the most sustainable building might be the one that plans for its own disappearance.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designer: Başak Elgin

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Project credits: ALL AS ONE by Başak Elgin.