10 iconic contemporary cemeteries, from Aldo Rossi to Toyo Ito

The extension is a "city of the dead" made up of buildings and functional paths where the relationship with death in a private form is replaced by a civic and institutional approach to farewell. The complex is characterised by buildings in a line housing the columbarium and surrounding a green enclosure in which the cubic volume of the ossuary is located. The bare volumes, in which windows without frame sopen like slashes in a regular rhythm , suggest the idea of a house, or what was once a house.

On the island of S. Michele, where the Venetian cemetery has been located since the 19th century, the extension is in line with the existing layout characterised by a succession of progressive additions of burial grounds: a grid of enclosures to be built in successive stages, organised into burial areas and structured by means of columbaria, preserves the progressive and stratified character of the historic architecture, modifying its degree of permeability thanks to greater openings and perspective views.

Commissioned by his wife in memory of Giuseppe Brion - founder of the Brionvega brand - the work, nestled in the greenery, is articulated in a series of buildings in exposed concrete and is composed of propylaea, an arcosolium, a chapel, a "meditation pavilion" placed on a body of water and a shrine with the tombs of relatives. The symbols used represent the vocation to go beyond death through identity and imperishable conjugal love.

The complex, which includes a crematorium, chapels, meditation hill and burial grounds, is spread over a vast wooded area with plains, woods and clearings and is an example of a fine balance between built work and landscape. Here hares, deer and squirrels run to accompany visitors at their farewell: death is conceived not as an end but as a passage, through a process of rebirth that finds its confirmation in Nature's regeneration rhytm.

The new crematorium confronts the existing monumental context by interpreting the spirit of the place through a respectful relationship with the forest. Far from being a mimetic intervention, however, the building is a square and compact volume made almost exclusively of exposed brick. Inside, in addition to the functional activities (space for crematoriums, management and handling of coffins), there are public functions (waiting room and farewell room) as well as office and staff rooms.

In the country with the highest percentage of cremations on the planet, the "Forest of Meditation" crematorium gently stretches out between wooded hills and an artificial lake over which it is mirrored. A large reinforced concrete roof supported by elegant columns seems to float lightly, covering the spaces in which the internal functions are located: three waiting rooms, two farewell rooms, a room with six crematoria and two burial rooms.

Situated in the middle of the largest of the Danish islands in a partially wooded green area, the new municipal crematorium was designed to meet new, up-to-date standards, including that of exhaust gas purification. The volumes of different sizes and heights, clad in ash-coloured brick, characterise a secular building with a functional, clearly contemporary language which renounces all religious rhetoric or symbolism.

Near Omaha Beach, on the sea where one of the most important military operations ever took place, stands the American cemetery in Normandy. In the green lawn, white crosses - in memory of only some of the actual victims - are perfectly aligned and facing west. There is no trace of individual identity, but only a respectful silence to pay homage to those who, in the bloody din of the landing, disappeared without a trace in the darkest page of history.