Detail of the project ed. 2016

city-ceme­tery-st-mar­tin-linz / Hei­dl Architek­ten ZT GmbH

Design­er	Andreas Heidl
Loca­tion	Wiener Bun­desstrasse 101, A 4050 Traun
Design Team	Arch DI Andreas Heidl, DI Bir­git Kornmueller, Ing Michael Koch
Year	2008
Pho­to credits	all pho­tos: Josef Pausch

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

HOW ONE CAN MEET DEATH
As win­ner of an archi­tec­tur­al com­pe­ti­tion held by Linz AG, Hei­dl archi­tects have upgrad­ed the ceme­tery of St Mar­tin by restruc­tur­ing the entrance area and build­ing a chapel of rest.
They have suc­ceed­ed in empha­sis­ing the mean­ing of the place by the use of estab­lished design tools like mon­u­men­tal­i­ty or the cre­ation of visu­al axes. On the oth­er hand they use nat­ur­al com­po­nents like grassy mounds, sandy paths and clear groves to empha­sise the spe­cial qual­i­ty of the woody cemetery.
In no part of the area they lose sight of their aim – to define the space through a sequence of exte­ri­or and inte­ri­or rooms and to there­fore assign cer­tain usages and con­nect­ed moods.
The tri­par­tite main entrance door opens up to a wood­ed court that is bound­ed by a sim­i­lar door sit­u­a­tion in the back. From here the view falls straight on the main axis lead­ing into the green.
A few steps far­ther a bell tow­er posi­tioned in front of the entrance façade of an admin­is­tra­tion build­ing ini­ti­ates the change of direc­tion of 90 degrees. One now moves towards the chapel of rest in an exte­ri­or space pro­tect­ed by a wall, an earth mound and the sky… Met­al coat­ed slid­ing doors open up to the main room of the chapel of rest. On the oppo­site side one will lat­er step out­side into the old chapel that is inte­grat­ed into the new struc­ture conclusively.
ATTEN­TIVE IN NICHES
The five lying in state nich­es are hid behind a cladding of white stained oak wood slats along the long side of the room, so that the atten­tion is focused on the involved niche.
On the oth­er side the floor ris­es – lev­el­ling the per­spec­tive – towards the oppo­site long side, that opens up glass­i­ly atop a bench to a silent court with a sin­gle tree. Via glassy sec­tions in the roof rays of light fall onto the walls. The mod­est colour­ful­ness and mate­ri­al­i­ty of the room under­line the mes­sage to put the human into the cen­tre and to find some­thing spe­cial in the simple.
(Extract of an arti­cle by Romana Ring 2008-11-08)

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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