The master's thesis "HOLY GROUND Cemetery Buntentor. Urban cemeteries in the
transformation: co-creative activation of hybrid open spaces" convinced the jury of the Otto Borst Prize 2025 and was awarded the science prize.
The Otto Borst Prize is awarded by "Forum Stadt - Netzwerk historischer Städte e.V." in recognition of outstanding academic achievements in the fields of urban history, urban sociology, monument preservation and urban development. Theses and dissertations can be submitted. The prize has been awarded annually throughout Germany since 2005 - in odd-numbered years to promote young academics, in even-numbered years in the field of urban regeneration.
The master's thesis HOLY GROUND was created in the Master's programme in Urban Planning and is dedicated to urban cemeteries, hybrid open spaces and co-creation. In view of far-reaching changes in the cemetery and burial sector, increasing urban space pressure and the changing needs of an urban society, it is clear that differentiated planning and action approaches are required. This opens up a relevant field of research in urban development.
The work strategically addresses this context by exploring creative ways of dealing with limited and changing spatial resources. HOLY GROUND investigates the transformative potential of urban cemeteries and explores how they can be activated through co-creative approaches as hybrid open spaces to meet existing challenges and demands. The approaches include experimental, creative and collaborative approaches that aim to develop urban cemeteries as multi-layered, overlapping spatial structures.
Using a transdisciplinary and transformative research approach, which predominantly incorporates a qualitative mix of methods and takes local perspectives into account, the case study of the Buntentor cemetery in Bremen and other practical examples are used to demonstrate concrete ways of transforming cemeteries and test them locally.
The research results illustrate that co-creation enables an expansion of the traditional cemetery landscape and that cemeteries can be reinterpreted as integral components of urban neighbourhoods. This illustrates how the dual role of urban cemeteries - as places of remembrance and community - can be combined if suitable approaches are available. In the future, cemeteries could take on a central role as diverse hybrid open spaces by enabling interwoven communicative and reflective spaces that meaningfully complement existing spatial offerings. Flexible tools and transferable approaches were presented that show how cemetery transformation can be organised practically and carefully and what potentials arise in the process.
Finally, process-related theses are formulated that succinctly summarise key findings in the field of cemetery transformation. Research suggests that co-creative approaches can give rise to new spatial typologies with their own character. However, the contribution of this work is not only to point out concrete solutions in the sense of urban development orientated towards the common good, but also to specifically promote an expanded understanding of space and planning.
The research work is intended as a fundamental contribution that draws attention to relevant connections, highlights correlations and illustrates these using strategic approaches and methods.
The Master's thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christina Simon-Philipp and Sarah Ann Sutter M.A.
Further information on the Otto Borst Prize
here
(Introduction of the Otto Borst Prize at the beginning: http://www.forum-stadt.eu/start/Otto_Borst_Preis/Wissenschaftspreis.html)
