Design concept
During the site analysis process, while exploring
the theme of ‘cemetery’ and searching for appropri-
ate symbolism and forms, the landscape architects
discovered a description of the ‘islands of the dead’
located outside Venice. This image of ‘islands of
peace and tranquillity’ in the middle of an urban
context, with its different buildings, roads, bustle
and noise, appeared to be an interesting vehicle for
the concept for a cemetery.
Lohrer and Hochrein designed four trapezoidal-
shaped burial landforms, whose shapes related
to the characteristic language of forms found in
the landscape park. Surrounded by wedge-shaped
earthen berms, the four burial areas rise up from the
extensive surrounding dry grasslands like islands. A
main linear pathway, which changes direction twice
to avoid becoming a banal axis, connects the four
islands.
There are three kinds of graves in the new cemetery:
(1) normal earth graves in the flat ground; (2) the so-
called ‘urn-walls’ where cremation ashes are housed
in urns with inscribed plaques; and (3) a new form of
communal ‘earth columbarium’ where the urns are
lowered into the ground in steel baskets.
The funeral hall is situated on the dividing roadway
and becomes the connecting element between the
4.31
Design concept for the cemetery
4.32
Schematic plan for orientation at the cemetery
entrance