Description
Maulburg cemetery in the Black Forest lies on an incline at the edge of the village. The new funeral chapel stands against a romantic backdrop of trees and the old chapel with its retaining wall. It is flanked on each side by a square courtyard. Visitors reach the 9.65 metre high rectangular building from the bottom of the incline; behind a heavy grey concrete slab to the right, a pergola made of prefabricated concrete elements ascends in four stepped sections to the chapel.
Before the funeral service begins, the mourners gather beneath the low green canopy of the four plane trees in the “Courtyard of the Living”. To the rear of this level courtyard, concealed behind a narrow passageway are three viewing chambers.
The centre and culmination of the complex is the funeral chapel. One enters through the foremost of the three open and partially glazed ambulatory aisles. From inside, the solid square building appears suddenly lighter and brighter, more so even than the courtyards on either side. The concrete outer shell encloses a rectilinear skeletal structure of columns and ribs. Like a house within a house, it stands over the mourners like a protective, even respectfully ceremonial baldachin. In addition to light from the three ambulatory aisles at the sides, concealed rooflights allow light from above into the room. In front of the particularly bright south wall, likewise illuminated by a hidden rooflight, a steel cross projects from the side. The coffin is placed on a black floor slab. The pews, made of alder, offer seating for up to 140 mourners. After the funeral service, the coffin is taken through to the “Courtyard of the Dead”. This square, covered with gravel, resembles a Japanese garden. Three stone blocks lie in the southeast corner; in the southwest corner water bubbles from a spring and runs in a channel around all four sides of the courtyard before continuing along the gentle curve of a concrete wall down the hill until it collects in a pool at the bottom next to the entrance. The deceased are buried not only in the old cemetery behind the funeral hall but also as anonymous burials on the green to the side of the pergola.
The entire complex is based on a 1.38-metre grid. The ascent to the hall and the axial symmetry of courtyard/building/courtyard reinforce the typical, i.e. familiar pattern of paying one’s respects. Through its relationship between outside, inside and again outside, the design expresses the transition from before to after, from this world to thereafter, as a spatial as well as figurative opposition.
Adolphsen, Helge, Nohr, Andreas (Ed.): Sehnsucht nach heiligen Räumen. Eine Messe in der Messe. Berichte und Ergebnisse des 24. Evangelischen Kirchbautages 31. Oktober bis 3. November 2002 in Leipzig, Darmstadt 2003, pp. 69-, pp. 74-, p. 78 | Bauwelt, no. 33/1993, pp. 1730- | Beton Prisma, no. 62/1992, pp. 26- and no. 65/1993, pp. 22- | Bund Deutscher Architekten Landesverband Baden-Württemberg (Ed.): Architektur 1990-1993 in Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart 1994, pp. 214- | DAM Architektur Jahrbuch 1993, Munich and New York 1993, pp. 126- | Deutsche Bauzeitung, no. 11/1994, pp. 112- | Goldbach, Ines (Ed.): Neue Architektur Oberrhein, (n.p.) Basel 2007, cover, pp. 130- | Kunst und Kirche, no. 1/2005, pp. 17- | Nerdinger, Winfried, Tafel, Cornelius: Birkhäuser Architekturführer. Deutschland. 20. Jahrhundert, Basel 1996, p. 394 | Pfeifer, Günter (et al.): Exposed Concrete. Technology and Design, Basel 2005, pp. 156-
Drawings
Axonometric view
Ground floor
Longitudinal section
Cross section
Perspective of the chapel with inner “Baldachin”
Photos
Funeral chapel with grass for anonymous burial in the foreground and pergola on the right
The chapel interior, view from the southwest
Originally published in: Rudolf Stegers, Sacred Buildings: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2008.