PLEČNIK AWARD in the category of public space
The design of the cemetery interposes into the slope of the forest's edge and coheres the experience of the site with the sensation of the landscape on a broader scale. The architects bridge the differences in altitude of the exceptionally demanding site using inclines, which visually connect the visitor with the horizon and the various forest ambients. The articulation of the contiguous burial area into several segments so as to allow the separate burial sites to be engrossed into the surrounding woods creates the opportunity to interweave the forest landscape with the grave sites, which subtly activates the potential of the public space and simultaneously protects it while the users are presented with a park layout which transcends the programme and the space of the cemetery.
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Cemetery Ankaran - Jury's report
The design of the cemetery interposes into the slope of the forest's edge and coheres the experience of the site with the sensation of the landscape on a broader scale. The architects bridge the differences in altitude of the exceptionally demanding site using inclines, which visually connect the visitor with the horizon and the various forest ambients. The articulation of the contiguous burial area into several segments so as to allow individual burial sites to be engrossed into the surrounding woods creates the opportunity to interweave the forest landscape with the grave sites, which subtly activates the potential of the public space and simultaneously protects it while the users are presented with a park layout which transcends the programme and the space of the cemetery.
On several levels, the design hints at its transcending of the scale. The park-like character of the cemetery and the linking with the forest paths engage the immediate broader context in an innovative way. At the same time, the broader spatial context and the exposed contact with the horizon and the sky guide the user towards contemplation and a more profound experience of the world and the space, notwithstanding the strictly delineated burial-site areas. With the greenery design featuring Aleppo pine and arborvitae, the new layout successfully integrates in the context of the landscape and bestows additional symbolic meaning upon the space of the cemetery. The design exhibits palpable mastery of the area's vertical articulation, whose simple design of interlinked terraces simultaneously resolves the navigation of the various altitude levels on the one hand and the establishment of a connection with the surroundings on the other.
The path begins with a funeral chapel and leads past a water ambient and a re-interpretation of a belfry. The roof is pierced by trees growing through it, representing the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead. With its abstract elements, this place of passage references the themes of cleansing, transcendence, passing and the cyclical time of life, and succeeds in producing a unique contemplative atmosphere together with the wider landscape. The authors' attention to the scale and the site's specificities has enabled the possibility for a multi-layered architectural work from which we can garner the second important characteristic: special attention is paid to the material, whose texture and colour is a reaction to the place's meaning. The earth-tone colour of the concrete creates a warm atmosphere while the gradation of the concrete's textures subtly introduces the presence of soil into the experience at the very beginning so that through the forest sequences, its unmediated materiality may resonate all the way to the burial sites.
In the modern split-second culture, which is losing its sensibility to spatial experience by the minute, the authors were doubtless faced with a major challenge in re-interpreting the burial ritual without reproducing the cultural patterns verbatim. After all, our attitude to death represents a perennial theme, indeed a theme employing the burial ritual to connect us with the materiality of the world in a specific manner. As such, it deserves the nurturing of the notion of life in the broader sense and it is exactly for this reason that the public space which Cemetery Ankaran is opening by interweaving the forest paths has such a capacity for conveying.
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