On the way out from Sarlat in France – a charming medieval city where Jean Nouvel did his conversion of a church – there is a cemetery filled with beautiful little glass sheds, providing shelter for a large number of graves. The structures are delicate and shaped as presently-very-fashionable iconic houses, eaveless and carefully proportioned.
I have no idea what kind of tradition makes the people of Sarlat build these pieces, nevertheless they contribute something really special to the cemetery. Do they provide some kind of homeness for the dead? Do they ease the longing of the living? Are they architecture more of the former or of the latter?
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