Cork: Flood-Resistant Memorials Built from Human Ash-Infused Concrete in Shanghai

What if the dead could protect the living? Cork proposes exactly that: a cemetery system for Shanghai where cremated human remains are mixed into aggregate concrete to form structural pillars, and those pillars become the backbone of an underground flood defense network. It is an idea that is equal parts unsettling and logical, collapsing two of the city's most pressing crises into a single architectural proposition.

Designed by Joseph Singleton and Isaac Palmiere, Cork was shortlisted in the Circle of Life competition. The project confronts Shanghai's dual emergency head-on: a burial crisis driven by population density and a flooding threat amplified by climate change. Rather than treating memorial space and infrastructure as separate programs, the designers fuse them, proposing that cemeteries become functional components of the city's water management system.

A Fan-Shaped Tower Rooted in Flood Channels

The section drawing reveals Cork's primary architectural gesture: a fan-shaped tower that rises from below-grade infrastructure, with planted terraces stepping outward and a central chimney serving the crematorium function. Below ground, circular ducts form the flood diversion network, channeling excess water away from vulnerable urban zones. The axonometric drawing makes the relationship between surface and subsurface explicit. Circular conduits rise vertically, connecting the underground water management system to the fan-shaped memorial structures above. It is a diagram that reads as both plumbing and monument.

The structural logic is straightforward. Human ash is mixed with aggregate to produce concrete pillars that reinforce the flood channels. These are not decorative gestures; they are load-bearing elements in a water infrastructure system. The remains of the dead literally hold the city together during extreme weather events. Cork makes the case that this is not macabre but deeply pragmatic, transforming a resource (cremation byproduct) that is otherwise dispersed or stored into something structurally useful.

Radiating Fins and the Quality of Light Below Ground

At the base of the tower, radiating illuminated fins create a striking interior space where visitors gather beneath a canopy of structural ribs. The geometry is deliberate: the fins direct sight lines upward toward the chimney, reinforcing the vertical journey from burial to atmosphere. Light filters through the structure in controlled ways, giving the space a solemnity that serves its memorial function without relying on conventional funerary aesthetics.

The underground hall extends this spatial quality. Flaring columns support the ceiling while visitors cross a grated walkway that moves toward daylight at the far end. The grating is not incidental; it allows water to pass through during flood events, making the pedestrian surface itself part of the drainage system. Singleton and Palmiere treat the subterranean experience as a procession, one that moves from enclosed darkness toward openness, mirroring the symbolic passage from death to remembrance.

Stepped Terraces and a Scalable Urban Presence

From the exterior, the ribbed tower volume sits within a planted landscape, framed by trees, with stepped terraces providing public spaces for reflection. The form reads as topography as much as building, its layers of planted surface blurring the boundary between memorial architecture and urban park. The designers envision this scalability as essential: as Shanghai's population grows, the system can expand, transforming raised highways, aqueducts, and bridges into flood-resistant memorial infrastructure.

The interior atrium, with its stacked circular floor plates and visitors silhouetted against bright incoming light, suggests a vertical cemetery that grows upward over time. Each level could accommodate new ash-infused concrete elements, adding structural capacity to the flood network while expanding the memorial program. It is an architecture of accumulation, where the building becomes more resilient and more meaningful as more people are interred within it.

Why This Project Matters

Cork refuses to treat death as a problem of storage. By embedding human remains into working urban infrastructure, Singleton and Palmiere propose a cemetery that gives back to the city it occupies. The dead contribute to flood resilience. The living walk through memorial spaces that double as public parks and water management systems. It is a provocation that challenges how we compartmentalize infrastructure, ecology, and ritual.

For a city like Shanghai, where land is scarce and flooding increasingly severe, the proposal is more than speculative. It offers a systems-level argument: that memorial architecture should not be passive ground but active infrastructure. Whether or not ash-infused concrete finds its way into engineering specifications, the broader question Cork raises is worth sitting with. What obligations do our buildings have beyond shelter, and what obligations do we have to embed meaning into the systems that keep cities alive?

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designers: Joseph Singleton, Isaac Palmiere

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Project credits: Cork by Joseph Singleton, Isaac Palmiere Circle of Life (uni.xyz).