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Considerable transformation of the burial method at the turn of the 19 th and the 20 th centuries is apparent from the existing results of research in the developments of burial and funeral architecture, when after centuries controlled by the church -due to social and political changesgradual secularisation of the society and subsequent desacralisation of funeral rituals started appearing. This phenomenon, as well as other aspects (e.g. Josephine reforms in 1782) brought about a change in the approach to newly established cemeteries but also the necessity to define areas for new burial methods and constructing new building types of funeral architecture. The position of necropolis is also changing as the society understands it, and its inclusion not only in the organism of towns but also in everyday life of town and municipality citizens. Thus, not only new but mainly original cemeteries are searching for their new position in the society. Studio papers try to react to this situation written by students of the master degree of the specialisation Architecture and civil engineering at the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the VŠB -Technical University in Ostrava, led by prof. Ing. arch. Petr Hrůša, doc. Ing. Martina Peřinková, Ph.D. and Ing. arch. Klára Frolíková Palánová, Ph.D. Students try to view necropolis in an innovative way and give them a new dimension to succeed and become adequate public or semi-public space of cities and municipalities. The contribution represents starting points of possible solutions on case studies, such as transformation of a cemetery in Ostrava on the Hulváky Hill, the design of establishing a new cemetery in open space near the municipality of Velichovky, including the design of a funeral hall, situating a new urn grove in the place of a former cemetery -the current park -a part of which is the design of a new crematorium in Nový Jičín and extension of possibilities for placement of ashes and designs supporting the development of funeral tourism in the Olšany Cemeteries in Prague.

Behind every human death there is a story, unique to the human being, one that comes to a close after the official funeral ceremony. Generally, ‘close’ is the word essential for the bereaved and should govern the entire funeral process until the eventual placement of the remains. Today, a traditional funeral ceremony is losing its importance; it has either transformed itself or ceased to exist. The consequence of these changes involves new construction types of structures or transformation of existing crematoria and ceremony halls that are part of the funeral traditions in the Czech Republic. All this began with the influence of secularisation of society in the first half of the 20th century intensified through the dictate of the political regimen in the then Czechoslovakia after 1948. The period saw a suppression of all church activities, this including the funeral industry, when the state’s objective was to take a full control of everything. It resulted in large-scale construction of funeral halls and crematoria. This pushed cremation to the current 80% or so out of the total number of funerals. Following 1989, however, the society found itself in a vacuum through another change in the system. Due to this, funeral halls lost their initial ideological substantiation. The consequences include a search for new forms and the transformation of the ceremony which moves to the area in front of the cremation chamber or even to the very site of placement. This however requires a construction of new structures and sites for storing the ash. The aim is to find the best possible way of handling human remains while creating a cemetery setting that is observed (bereaved) friendly and enables to continue burials in the current necropolis sites.