Initiated by Chabad of Thailand in collaboration with designer Ariel Rabi, the project aims to create a new cemetery for Thailand’s Jewish community—a place that combines the practical and ceremonial requirements of Jewish burial with the landscape and architectural vision of a memorial garden.

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Rather than creating a rigid, dense arrangement of gravestones in rows, the burial grounds were designed as a quiet, shaded tropical garden. Pathways branch out and curve between the burial plots, while trees and clusters of vegetation—placed along the boundaries of the site and throughout the burial areas—soften the geometric order and create intimate spaces for reflection and remembrance.

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Alongside the garden, a complex of buildings was designed to accommodate burial ceremonies in accordance with Jewish tradition. It includes a gathering and eulogy hall, a purification room, a family room, an office, restrooms, service rooms, and building systems. The layout carefully separates the circulation of visitors and family members from the route of the deceased and the operational areas.

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Two architectural approaches were explored during the design process. The first proposed a low, restrained, and relatively conventional structure that blends into the surrounding vegetation and responds to the tropical climate—a more practical and feasible solution for construction under local conditions.

The second alternative sought to give the site a distinctive architectural and symbolic identity. The eulogy hall was conceived as a sculptural, monumental structure composed of tall, inclined triangular planes that create a powerful silhouette within the landscape. The building is not merely an enclosure for the farewell ceremony; it becomes an architectural memorial in its own right—a gravestone on the scale of a building, perhaps even evoking flames or a memorial torch.

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The geometric planes rise above the vegetation, while the burial garden and its gently curving paths continue around them. This creates a deliberate contrast between the monumental architecture and the tropical landscape, forming a continuous sequence of ceremony, architecture, and nature—from the entrance and gathering area, through the eulogy hall, and finally into the quiet surroundings of the burial garden.