Halvorson | Tighe & Bond Studio’s design for West Laurel Hill’s new Jewish Cemetery—Makom Shalom—is inspired by the natural landforms that makes West Laurel Hill Cemetery’s landscape and experience memorable. The cemetery staff and design team focused on creating a contemporary, contemplative garden cemetery that respects Jewish funeral customs and culture while integrating seamlessly with the surrounding landscape character of West Laurel Hill. This resulted in an overall design form, expressed in the layout of the walls and circulation patterns, that reflects the flowing geometry of the existing cemetery landscape and roadways.
Situated at a promontory along Belmont Avenue near the Cemetery’s main entrance, the primary design challenge was to create a series of terraced and relatively level burial areas that gradually step down the steep slope, allowing each terrace to nestle into the topography. This strategy enhances and preserves the landscape character facing Belmont Avenue as well as the visitor experience within the cemetery. Through a series of iterative design studies, the preferred layout revealed itself. Tall, curvilinear retaining walls embrace the existing topography of the slope, creating an upper level burial area with an overlook garden that offers a restful, contemplative space for visitors.
The promontory wall is set back from the property line with a naturalized vegetative screen along the Belmont Avenue to provide an elegant feature within the new development. Its gentle curving geometry is reflected in the lower walls, road, walking paths, and burial layout to establish a visually unified design that creates desirable new area serving the Jewish community. Lawn paths combined with lavish planting materials preserve the openness of the existing landscape while offering a soothing, garden experience for those visiting loved ones.
Green infrastructure associated with stormwater management, the result of a close collaboration between the landscape architect and civil engineer, is seamlessly integrated below the lawn paths to filter storm runoff into underground basins at the bottom of the slope. Working closely with the West Laurel Hill Cemetery horticulturalist, the design team selected a palette of planting materials that were native to the Eastern Pennsylvania region as well as those with biblical significance related to Jewish culture.
The 450-foot-long, 8’ tall promontory masonry wall, guardrail, and lower terrace walls are the result of an integrated design effort between the structural engineer and landscape architect to create a series of wall terraces, which are iconic, yet fit within the character of West Laurel Hill Cemetery. The chosen materials reflect the spirit of the cemetery, creating an evolving natural experience that also offers a sense of permanence.
Compared to Chesed Shel Emet, the existing Jewish Cemetery, which offers a more formal experience with evergreen hedges and orthogonal paved paths, Makom Shalom (A Place of Peace) engages with the landscape to provide a naturalistic setting with meandering trails. Organized into a collection of smaller burial neighborhoods, Makom Shalom provides intimate spaces that allow the cemetery to offer a range of price points based on the type of memorial and desirability of its location.
Learn more about the design inspiration via West Laurel Hill Cemetery’s Spring 2021 issue of The Connection (pg 8-9), Mainline Media News, and the Jewish Exponent.