The design of St. John's Abbey Cemetery provides seamless integration of expanded burial areas with a historic rural cemetery - a design that allows for continued future expansion while retaining the key landscape features surrounding the site. The simple, monastic nature of the site is retained in this strong, modern interpretation of cemetery design while focusing on the surrounding natural beauty. St. John's University has a long history of embracing modernism. The modern elements throughout the university campus and monastery grounds are intended to mirror the monastic aesthetic of simplicity. The cemetery expansion utilizes this aesthetic approach as its primary building block.

Gracefully nestled into grade is the Hillside Columbarium with steps, ramps, and niche burial spaces. Subtle terraces and wing walls are built into the steps and hillside to allow for future columbarium terraces and wall development in subsequent phases. Along a new axis, visitors move underneath an arbor to bring the scale of the natural environment into harmony with the scale of the human form passing through it. To the left and right of the central arbor are Columbarium walks that are lined with custom-designed granite benches. Each bench is centered under a Honeylocust tree - allowing for dappled light as a visitor contemplates the columbarium across from the seat.