Halloween is behind us, but Day of the Dead, a celebration of the departed, is just getting started around the world and particularly in Mexico, where the tradition originated. While folks celebrating the holiday are decorating the tombstones of their loved ones, let's pay a visit to the distinctive grave sites of some of our favorite architects, shall we?
The architect Adolf Loos famously wrote an essay opposing ornament in art (with the pugnacious title "Ornament and Crime.") "The evolution of culture," wrote Loos, "marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects." Little surprise then, that his gravestone lacks the usual angels and doves and for that matter even the years of his birth and death: it's just a cube with the words "Adolf Loos." Architects are known for being sticklers, cantankerous even. They spend their lives experimenting with shapes and forms, so it only seems fitting that their grave markers would be just as distinctive.
Le Corbusier designed a pair of markers in the style of one of his own concrete architectural models. Carlo Scarpa, who was buried standing up and wrapped in linen in the style of a medieval knight, has a marble grave with a maze-like design. Frank Lloyd Wright's marker could not even be called a gravestone, because it looks more like an uncut rock. Meanwhile, Buckminster Fuller's grave has an esoteric quote he once gave to Playboy magazine inscribed on it: "Call me Trimtab." Below, take a look at the striking grave designs of eight visionary architects.
↑ Carlo Scarpa's grave in the Brion Cemetery in Treviso, Italy.
↑ Frank Lloyd Wright's first grave, now empty, in the Unity Chapel Cemetery in Wyoming, Wisconsin. He was latercremated and buried with his last wife in Taliesin West in Scotsville, Arizona.
↑ Buckminster Fuller's grave in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass.
↑ Bruce Goff's grave in Chicago's Graceland cemetary
↑ Adolf Loos' grave in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna, Austria
↑ Alvar Aalto's grave in the Hietaniemi cemetery in Helsinki, Finland
↑ Mies Van der Rohe's grave in Chicago's Graceland Cemetery
↑ Le Corbusier's grave in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, France
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