Detail of the project ed. 2024

auf­bahrung­shalle-kemat­en-an-der-krems-oo / Austria

Design­er	Arch. MMAG Anna Moser
Loca­tion	Bergfeld­straße 2a, 4531 Kemat­en an der Krems, Austria
Nation	Aus­tria
Design Team
Year	2021
Pho­to credits	Pho­tog­ra­phy: Gre­gor Graf, www.gregorgraf.net

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

Moser und Hager archi­tects: the tran­sience of all earth­ly – (Text by Romana Ring)

Can archi­tec­ture explain death? Dis­pel fear? Give solace? Per­haps not. What it def­i­nite­ly can do is: pro­vide an appro­pri­ate set­ting for our ulti­mate des­tiny. With the new funer­al hall in Kemat­en an der Krems, Moser und Hager Architek­ten have cre­at­ed such a set­ting, a place that con­veys the ancient sto­ry of death and (build­ing) cul­ture in the lan­guage of our time.

Moser und Hager Architek­ten draw on ele­ments we have known for mil­len­nia: the wall that sep­a­rates the dis­trict of the depart­ed from the world of liv­ing, for exam­ple, defines the new facil­i­ty just as strik­ing­ly as does the motif of the thresh­old and the path that leads from here to the here­after. In Kemat­en, this path fol­lows the nar­row lane from the Romanesque parish church in the cen­tre of the vil­lage, on the edge of the set­tle­ment now dom­i­nat­ed by sin­­gle-fam­i­­ly homes and com­mer­cial build­ings, and ends in the cen­tral axis of the ceme­tery, thus deter­min­ing the posi­tion of the entrance. This route is the back­bone on which the new facility’s frame­work of sym­bols and spaces is built.

A wall made from the con­glom­er­ate stone typ­i­cal of the Krems Val­ley extends the ceme­tery wall and envelopes the funer­al hall, which ris­es direct­ly at the road­side. The wall con­tin­ues, shift­ed back a lit­tle from the street line, and cre­ates a small sec­ondary vol­ume, thus defin­ing the main entrance and the fore­court to the hall.

The wall offers pro­tec­tion from the street noise and pry­ing eyes. It clos­es out the out­side world, yet it does not close off the space. The del­i­cate con­crete shell of the roof floats above the wall, sup­port­ed by slen­der T‑profiles paired to cre­ate a cru­ci­form sec­tion. Through the trans­par­ent glass enclo­sure of the funer­al hall, your gaze drifts out­ward to the shel­tered inter­ven­ing space and, fol­low­ing the scend­ing planes of the roof, up into tree-top-framed sky. The chang­ing day­light and mov­ing clouds com­ple­ment the earth­ly weight of the stone. Added to this is the warm appeal of the oak wood that is used for the sim­ple seat­ing and which clads both end walls of the funer­ary space, which can be divid­ed in half with a heavy cur­tain. The rear wall, which is fit­ted with two sim­ple, mov­able brass cross­es as a back­drop for funer­al cer­e­monies, dis­creet­ly con­ceals the doors to the ancil­lary rooms, which are also acces­si­ble from out­side. At the fore­court end, the wood­en wall pan­els can be rotat­ed on asym­met­ri­cal­ly posi­tioned axes to cre­ate two large open­ings shield­ed by the wood­en pan­els. Beyond this thresh­old, the inte­ri­or of the hall grad­u­al­ly tran­si­tions into the fore­court, which slopes up slight­ly towards the out­build­ing and is shad­ed by the over­hang of the plant­ed green roof. Rain­wa­ter seeps into a brass chan­nel run­ning down the mid­dle, where it is col­lect­ed. From here it drips down into the water basin designed by Ger­hard Bran­dl – anoth­er block, this one of con­crete and sunk into the ground. It might remind us of the tran­sience of all earth­ly things and of the cycle of nature.

Explana­to­ry report of the project
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

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