Raising the Dead

As the world's population rises, so does the number of deaths. As a result, the urban overcrowding that increasingly afflicts the living is having a similar effect upon the dead. Cemeteries are running out of room, and in no city is the problem more acute than in bustling Rio de Janeiro. Rio's 4.5 million are jammed into a narrow strip that runs between mountains and the sea, and the southern half of the city has already run out of space for the dead.

The nearest suitable new location is about 30 miles away.

Each burial in the southern area's single cemetery entails the shifting of corpses buried earlier--and the cost of a plot has soared to $5,000. Nearby residents are complaining about ugly and pervasive odors; in mid-November, a state legislator seriously proposed that all corpses henceforth be perfumed.

To solve this problem, a bright Brazilian architect has designed a 39-story, $14.5 million skyscraper cemetery, which will be privately financed and under construction by January.

It will offer 21,000 tombs, each of which will have two separate shelves for bodies and five ossuaries (which will hold solid remains after bodies decompose). Thus, says the architect, "up to seven in a family are assured of being together." Eventual capacity of the building will be 147,000.

Beds for Grief. On the roof of the vertical mortuary will be a heliport, so that bodies can be flown in quickly from outlying areas. There will be an eight-story garage for visitors, two churches and 21 chapels. Each of the latter has a bed for grieving friends and relatives. Explains Architect Dy-lardo Silva e Souza: "Who wants to spend the night in the kind of cemetery we have now?" Another feature: soothing but somber background music, 24 hours a day. "We can't play sambas in a place like this," says Silva e Souza.

Each carneiro (tomb) in Rio's edifice will sell for $1,800, but tenancy is guaranteed in perpetuity. To comply with Rio law, 10% of the tombs will be rented at $80 for five years to those who can't afford to buy. Another 5%--all on the top floor amid the ventilating machinery--will go free to the poor. Silva e Souza himself hasn't yet purchased his own carneiro. "I'm kind of hoping," he says wistfully, "that they'll give me one free."

All this should put Rio far ahead of Nashville, Tenn., where a three-story vertical mausoleum with a capacity of 9,000 bodies is slowly rising at Woodlawn Memorial Park. "We're just coming out of the ground with the second story now," reports Owner H. Raymond Ligon, "and if sales continue to go as well as at present, we'll keep on building."

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