Urban Death Project Aims to Turn Corpses into Compost

WHEN YOU DIE, do you want to be buried or cremated? If the architect Katrina Spade gets her Urban Death Project to work, you might have a third option: compost.

If Spade’s first recomposition center opens in Seattle in 2023 as planned, it’ll be an airy, spiritual place where people can carry their loved ones’ corpses to a final rest—and put those corpses’ decomposition to an eco-minded use. She describes ​the facility as part funeral home, part place of memorial, and part public park.​ “I think there’s value in creating places where we’re thinking about death and its role in our lives, and the fact that it’s coming for all of us,” Spade says.