MAHAPRASTHANAM, A

CREMATORIUM
Location: Hyderabad, Telangana

Site Area: 3.7 Acres

Year of Completion: 2015
Architectural Firm: D A Studios

concept as ‘lamenting the lost

Mahaprasthanam a crematorium that intuitively concentrates on the encounter of

ritualistic orders of funeral obsequies for Hindus, appropriating individual and
collective spatial layers, a subdued palette and a silent language of architectural
gestures.

Crematorium with its characteristic bow

Crematorium forms an invisible part of the built fabric, one that is not stitched into the
aesthetic explorations of a city’s transforming viscidity.

Crematorium may be read as a singularity in this space.

The notion is perhaps of the bare and essential that need not be formally inscribed with ideas
but which can be waylaid with smaller, agile solutions – neither necessarily artful nor
thoughtful.
The design uses an existing 3.7acre cemetery as its canvas, replenishing it with structures
playing with relevant customary alignments and metaphorical geometries and weaving
generous interconnected spaces within.

A multi-faceted narrative composed of

an Entrance Pavilion

a Cold Room

a landscaped area

a pavilion for an Electrical Crematorium

Administration Blocks

Ceremonial Yards

a Waiting Hall

Changing and Rest Rooms

a Canteen, Traditional

Public Funeral Pyre

Existing Graves and Parking.

The outcome is a series of disparate forms organically arranged over the gentle gradients of
the topography to enjoy connections and interactions with carved out central and ambient
spaces.

The understated network of pavilions sets a sense of the precinct and organises an ambulatory
within

life’s purpose is fulfilled when one goes through the 16 phases called Shodasha Samskara.

The design evolves from the appropriation of characteristic forms and the exploration of
these as spatial experiences.

At the outset, the stark angular structures are neither overtly declarative nor ornamental. Each
pavilion is isolated, taking each fragment of architecture individually and purposefully.

the built forms are shaped in such a way that; Pavilions embrace to console the loved ones,
Waiting halls silently bow in honour, & Pyres open up to liberatethe lost in a farewell.’

The customized script casting onto the precast walls were assembled on site in a month.

The balance of materiality, of interventions, of visceral frameworks bear a suggestion to a

sense of temporariness.