tombstone as vessel by Luke Y Willis from turkey

Tombstones are used to commemorate the cherished and act as a marking for a place to respect and worship. However, because of its inanimate quality, tombstones have a short life in use or function other than graphically representing the date and name of the deceased. Cemeteries are overpopulated with forgotten tombstones and rarely have a cohesive planning to endure time.

To challenge the notion of the inanimate tombstone and its wasteful permanence, we must first give it life. By creating a tombstone in the shape of a vessel the tombstone will record, react, and reshape itself with the continuously changing context.

The stone that is quarried from the earth is first formed into a vessel by a series of elliptical cutouts. The remaining pieces are used as infill, and the stone is marked to record the deceased. The concave scoop acts as a vessel to continuously capture the time and nature of its context, acting as a basin when it rains, or as a planter to house a commemorative tree, until eventually it gets immersed back into the landscape.