Highgate Cemetery Landscape Masterplan is a 75-year design vision for the renewal of the Grade 1 listed burial ground.

Highgate is one of the world’s finest examples of a picturesque cemetery, and has long been home to some of the greatest men and women of London’s history. It is also a working burial ground that is running out of space; and a long-neglected woodland suffering from habitat loss, flooding, subsidence and heritage deterioration. Commissioned by the Highgate Cemetery Trust, a masterplan and 25-year management scheme need to simultaneously safeguard the cemetery’s history as well as equipping it for the future.

Our vision for Highgate Cemetery envisages a place of coexistence for all life and all death - human and non-human, local and global. Karl Marx is joined by the last white rhino; the Victorian common graves are accompanied by mausoleums for stag beetles; and contemporary ecological death practices nourish the earth for future generations.

Highgate is a place where nature has coexisted alongside human burial for centuries, but it has done so coincidentally. Our proposal looks to a future of fully integrated natural systems where the cemetery is managed as a circular, zero-waste woodland; to the gradual growth of a future climate-adapted forest; where communities are invited to learn and work with the woodland; and where human death cycles are aligned with ecological life.

We embrace a fully cross-disciplinary approach, working with a diverse team of specialists in sustainability, heritage and the arts to balance the needs of a highly complex site.