Architects from the Zurich-based Architekturbüro Garrigues Maurer won a competition to design a crematory close to the Switzerland’s biggest cemetery in 2013. Now, they share with us its final implementation.
Crematory Friedhof am Hörnli is located in Basel, near the Switzerland’s directly border to Germany. The space serves as a place of mourning and devotion, and at the same time is a precisely cultivated garden. Therefore, is a multicultural area dedicated to use before and after death.
„The new crematory is characterized by the picture of simultaneity. The industrial process of incineration and the emotional exception of mourning. The translation is a building with a concrete structure and a brick skin. Concrete is a rough, industrial product, the brick is an hand-made and hand-laid material. The latter stretches around the building and opens to light and air, defining a porous border that is open and closed at the same time,” the architects briefly explain.
