Recompose|Seattle will be the first facility in the world to provide a sustainable option for after-death care. Designed in collaboration with Katrina Spade, founder and CEO of the Recompose public benefit corporation, the new facility will offer a service called “natural organic reduction” which converts human remains into soil, helping nourish new life after death – a third alternative to traditional burials and cremations that uses one-eighth the energy of cremation and saves over one metric ton of carbon dioxide per person.

The 18,500-square-foot facility located in Seattle’s SODO neighborhood carefully orchestrates the Recompose process, which is centered around a natural organic reduction vessel that transforms human remains into organic, nutrient-rich soil. The core of the Recompose|Seattle space is a modular system containing approximately 75 of these vessels, stacked and arranged to demarcate space for rituals and other types of public gatherings. Radiating from this ceremonial disposition area are spaces for shrouding (the storage and preparation of bodies), administrative back-of-house areas, and an interpretive public lobby which describes the Recompose process.

Katrina Spade first began working with Alan Maskin in 2015. In 2016, the Recompose team completed a Creative Exchange Residency at Olson Kundig where Spade and her team of architects and engineers designed the first prototype of the Recompose vessel.