When tree brothers share a common ancestor, yet diverge in their multitude point of views and ways of expressions, the role of their symbolic Mother (the city of Jerusalem) is crucial in reconsolidating the relationship existing between them, and bridging the differences when problems, conflicts and misunderstandings arise. This Maternity is Divine when these Three Brothers are seen as representing symbolically the Three Monotheistic Religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Since the emergence of the first conflicts in all their aspects between these three brothers, particularly in Jerusalem, their common Holly City, a wide variety of approaches to solve these conflicts has been adopted and tried: REligious, Political, Geographical, Demographical, Economical, and so on.
But for an Architect, whom the city and its built form are his tools of expression, this problem presents itself as a multifold' one; and to draw a way for a reconciliation requires most of these folds to be presented and active. How then his thoughts and responsibility toward society has to be metamorphosed?
Jerusalem as the "peace field"
Creating an architectural platform for communication, reconciliation and transcendence between these Three Religions, requires a context which is either neutral and highly passive, or common and highly active. The city of Jerusalem was seen as the most suitable location for creating such a highly active platform, as it is Holly and Symbolic for the believers of these three groups. Moreover, Jerusalem is compared to the Mother in Holly Books.
From another hand, and when we look at the built form and the planning of the city of Jerusalem, we realize that there is a problematic of integrating Cemeteries and Tombs in the dense urban fabric. Not to mention that the three Holly Monuments are an architectural manifestation of an earth/heaven bridge, being either a death or a passage to the other world, and which around them roatates a big part of the conflict, if not the essence of the conflict itself.
From long time, believers from all over the world wished to be buried in the soil of this city, add to this the local people and residents, a fact which led to a high density and almost an absence of burial space. These centeries carry a high meaning for the believers, as being a space of transition between the ephemeral earth and the eternal life, it is an end of the former and the beginning of the latter.
Here comes the main message that this design and statement holds: when a person burry his or her relative, it is a moment of deep mediation, of existence, of transcendence of all terrestrial attachment, even though this moment may (or not?) last a very short time, Why not then, at this very moment, go together, three of us, and burry our relatives? Paradoxical as it might sounds, it is oe of the very rare moments in one's life where a candel' light of pardoning might illuminates the darkness of war, killing, conflicts and rejection.
This cemetery, and part of solving the urban problematic of cemeteries in the city, with the creation of a new yet old type of cemetery, is a space that goes beyond serving the needs of the metropolis, and beyond being a necropolis, to be a metropolis in itself: a Park Cemetery where the three brothers in conflict will come, cry together, pray together, and start a new dialogue fromt he very end, a start from the very end of life. Isn't Heaven of Earth?
