Hasta La Ideas

Halloween is traditionally a day for honouring the dead, so today we’re revisiting some of the best cemetery, mausoleum and crematorium architecture on Dezeen.

The roots of Halloween, or All Hallows’ Eve, is thought to have originated from a Celtic festival dedicated to marking the beginning of winter and the end of the annual crop cycle. The day was believed to be the moment when the souls of the dead would travel to the underworld, weakening the barriers between the living and the dead.

In the modern Christian calendar it precedes All Saints Day, a day dedicated to honouring all of the dead saints. Other cultures also celebrate a day of the dead at this time of year, with cemeteries often at the heart of the celebrations and activities.

Although Christian cultures once buried their dead in the grounds of their parish church, the population explosion in cities in the 19th century brought about by the industrial revolution and subsequent overcrowding led to the creation of the designated burial areas we are more familiar with today.

These cemeteries became a focus for a new kind of monumental memorial architecture. This was particularly evident in areas of the world under the influence of the British Empire, whose architects indulged in creating highly decorative structures and covering graves and mausoleums with sculptures and carvings.

This was scaled back over the course of the 20th century, as memorial buildings reflected wider architectural trends. The construction of new cemeteries became less common and crematoria more popular as land grew in value and attitudes towards burial began to change.

Today’s contemporary cemetery structures and crematoria of note are usually built in a minimal or Modernist style, generally featuring exposed raw materials like brick, concrete stone or marble. Walls are often whitewashed and decorative elements are rare.

Here are 10 of the best examples from the pages of Dezeen:

Extension to the Gubbio necropolis, Italy, by Andrea Dragoni

Italian architect Andrea Dragoni extended a cemetery in Gubbio by adding rows of monumental travertine walls laid out in a sequence intended to reflect the linear arrangement of the ancient Italian town at the base of Mount Igino in the Appenines.

Public plazas and artworks are slotted in between the towering stone walls. “I wanted to reinterpret the material to emphasise the gravity of the volumes of the cemetery and their strong abstraction,” said Dragoni. Find out more about this project »

Gomes family mausoleum, Portugal, by Armazenar Ideias

Traditional mausoleum structures in Portugal are decorative, but Pedro Matos of Armazenar Ideias wanted to design a more modern and simplistic vault for the Gomes family, using blocks of white marble to build this cube-shaped structure for the in the city of Póvoa de Varzim

“There are different values to be represented in architecture now,” Matos told Dezeen. “Not so much the old solemnity and ‘baroque thinking’ associated to death, but a much more simple and essential way to interpret it, detached from the excess of symbolism.” Find out more about this project »

Sunset Chapel, Mexico, by Bunker Arquitectura

This boulder-shaped concrete building is a mourning chapel in Acapulco, Mexico, with crypts arranged around its perimeter. The chapel space is raised five metres above the ground to avoid needing to move large rocks on the site and is accessed via a set of internal steps.

“Acapulco’s hills are made up of huge granite rocks piled on top of each other,” said the architects. “In a purely mimetic endeavour, we worked hard to make the chapel look like ‘just another’ colossal boulder atop the mountain.” Find out more about this project »

New Funeral Home, Spain, by Batlle i Roig Arquitectes

Located to the west of Barcelona in the town of Sant Joan Despí, this concrete funeral home is embedded into a hillside site with a sloping grass roof that pitches back up at the front to frame a long, narrow facade. Corten steel columns alternate with floor-to-ceiling glass to create stripes of light and shadow.

“The materiality generated by the assortment of exposed structural element textures together with the natural light qualify and determine the atmospheres of each space, accompanying the visitors’ mourning at every turn,” said the architects. Find out more about this project »

Funeral Chapel in Ingelheim Frei-Weinheim, Germany, by Bayer & Strobel Architekten

The sharply angled gable of this chapel in a small German town creates a double-height funeral hall lit by a long narrow skylight, with glass walls framing two private courtyards and stone walls to “block off” the cemetery from the street.

“To do justice to its significance within the cemetery complex, the funeral is clearly marked with a gabled roof,” said architect Peter Strobel. “This creates an interior that feels dignified and solemn as well as simple and appropriate to its purpose.” Find out more about this project »

New Crematorium at Woodland Cemetery, Sweden, by Johan Celsing

Johan Celsing Arkitektkontor’s red brick design won a competition run by the city of Stockholm to create a new crematorium building inside the Woodland Cemetery originally designed by Swedish architect Eric Gunnar Asplund.

The new building sits in a clearing 150 metres from Asplund’s 1940s chapel, which can’t be modernised without making major changes to the protected structure.

Celsing’s building follows the curve of the terrain, sloping gently from its edges to a mound in the middle to make minimal impact on the woodland. Find out more about this project »

Chapel of St. Lawrence, Finland, by Avanto Architects

Avanto Architects designed this funeral chapel in Vantaa to last for 200 years, selecting hard-wearing materials that would develop character over time. The steel and concrete structure is topped with a copper roof, which includes a continuous skylight that follows the route of a visitor attending a funeral, through the building to the graveyard of the older adjacent church.

“The chapel’s architecture is a depiction of the passage of a Christian soul from here to the hereafter,” said the architects. “The whitewashed masonry walls and a continuous skylight next to it lead from one space to the next, from the low and dark to the lofty and light.” Find out more about this project »

Family Tomb, Portugal, by Pedro Dias

Lined with stainless steel panels, this pre-fabricated family tomb occupies a plot inside a cemetery on a mountainside in Arganil and is clad in softened black granite. It has capacity for eight coffins, with the central plinth used to support coffins during ceremonies and offer a seat with views over the surrounding landscape. A cruciform aperture is cut into the roof.

“The concept behind this small, rather unusual but challenging project was the creation of a simple, restrained and minimalistic architectural object that would interact directly with the impressive landscape by literally framing it,” explained Dias. Find out more about this project »

Crematorium in Kėdainiai, Lithuania, by Architektu Biuras G.Natkevicius ir Partneriai

Located on an industrial site, the fortress-like concrete walls of this crematorium – one of the first public buildings of its kind in Lithuania – are punctuated by dozens of square windows that are scattered across the facade.

A cluster of windows reveals the location of a private courtyard behind the perimeter wall, which also parts in two places to create entrances.

“To make a path for the first crematorium in Lithuania wasn’t easy,” said the architects. “In order to distance itself from the industrial environment the building was designed closed like a human introvert.” Find out more about this project »

Islamic Cemetery, Austria, by Bernardo Bader Architects

Bernardo Bader Architects used exposed red-tinted concrete for the main structure of this prayer building at an Islamic cemetery in the countryside of the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, which opens out onto a series of staggered graveyards.

The simple rectilinear building features a long rectangular window across one facade, screened by a latticed oak framework that displays one of the traditional patterns of Islamic mashrabiya screens.

The five rectangular graveyards are lined up at the back of the building. Each one contains several trees, benches and small patches of grass. Find out more about this project »

The post The Dezeen guide to contemporary cemeteries appeared first on Dezeen.

Filmmaker and photographer Tyrone Lebon has created a new documentary that offers a loose portrait of over 20 photographers at work, and muses on the nature of photography today…

The film, which is shown below, features some of the most significant figures in contemporary photography, from Juergen Teller to Mario Sorrenti, Nobuyoshi Araki to Ari Marcopoulos. Yet it is as much an account of a personal journey for Lebon: shot in a cinema vérité style, it chronicles his thoughts and experiences in making the piece (including phone calls to his father, Mark Lebon, another acclaimed photographer), and also features many different shooting styles and techniques. This encourages the audience to think about the nature of image-making while also absorbing the stories revealed by the participants. The film is shown below:

Lebon has enjoyed significant success in recent years, in his commercial shoots for brands such as Gap, Nokia and Stüssy, and in his personal projects, which include a book of work for Baron magazine, exploring how digital technology has impacted on sexuality. Yet for this project, he took a pause to reflect.

“I’ve always been fascinated by photography and photographers since my teens,” he tells CR. “I wrote my dissertation for my anthropology MA on a photographer, my dad’s a photographer, but I thought I would make documentaries and didn’t want to be a photographer. Anyway, as it worked out, photography became my career and then as I got busier over recent years, I felt like I needed to take some time away. Taking time to reflect on where I was at by being able to observe and talk to photographers I admire and am interested in felt like an exciting thing to do. So in December last year, I decided to take six months off shooting photos myself to do a project on photographers.”

Choosing who to include in the film happened in a number of ways. “It was a mix between some of my favourite photographers whose work I admire, and then some were recommended and introduced to me by others, and some are friends I’ve known for years,” Lebon continues. “Photographers are often pretty tricky people and busy photographers have a lot of demands on their time. So getting hold of them to even properly explain what you would like to do is hard enough.

“Juergen took me two years to properly get hold of,” he continues. “He had been filmed for another documentary a year or two before and wasn’t keen to allow that again. But I was persistent and eventually he agreed. Araki, even though he was in an exhibition with Juergen, was hard to track down and it was actually thanks to a friend inviting me to his karaoke bar in Tokyo that I eventually managed to meet him. Takeshi Homma is one of my favourite parts of the film and he is an amazing person to meet and talk to, but the few hours I got to spend with him were only confirmed just before. Similarly there were other great photographers I would have loved to have included in this, and came very close to meeting but things just didn’t quite work out for one reason or another. But I am pretty persistent and will continue to track them down!”

The film’s loose style was in part due to Lebon’s decision to make the work alone, which presented a number of difficulties. “Travelling and working as a one man band was pretty hard while doing certain sections of the filming when I was moving quickly to different countries,” he says. “Jetlag, constantly organising the next bits of filming, film jams, trying to get good sound, and all this while try to be focused and interview someone at the same time was pretty exhausting. But I needed to be alone as I wanted the film to feel intimate and even if I could’ve had a big crew it wouldn’t have helped to get the footage I was after.”

Some of the appearances by photographers in the film are pretty fleeting, so it makes sense to discover that this version of the project is not the completed work. “This film should actually be seen as an extended trailer for a bigger book project,” explains Lebon. “The book will include photographs, texts and films about 30 or so photographers – each film will be a short, 15 minute-ish portrait of each photographer, and I hope to have it finished by this time next year.”

Despite the film being one of the more comprehensive explorations of the work of contemporary photographers, Lebon doesn’t see it revealing any grand truths about the medium. “I don’t think it reveals anything specifically about photography today,” he says. “I hope it gives an insight into the ways these different photographers think and approach their work and their lives. But the thing it probably reveals most clearly is the journey I went on while trying to make this film about photography. As my dad says in the introduction, a film about photography should be seen as a lie about a lie, or maybe a truth about a truth…”

The film is released today via Canvas, a new platform sponsored by Grolsch that is “committed to promoting original cultural thinking and creativity”. It is created in collaboration with Somesuch production company and DoBeDo.

L’artiste canadien Darren Booth, connu depuis plusieurs années, notamment grâce à des collaborations avec Coca, McDonald’s ou encore le New York Times, réalise une série de typographies peintes à la main et scannées par la suite pour les livrer de manière digitale. D’une qualité remarquable, ces peintures typographiques sont à découvrir.

News: the World Monuments Fund/Knoll Modernism Prize for preservation of a modern landmark has been given to a Finnish committee responsible for restoring architect Alvar Aalto’s Viipuri Library in Vyborg, Russia (+ slideshow).

The Viipuri Library was built between 1927 and 1935 in what was then the Finnish city of Viipuri, and has been restored by a specially formed committee in collaboration with the building’s current management.

Barry Bergdoll, chairman of the Modernism Prize jury and curator of architecture and design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, said the building was “an icon of 20th century architecture”.

“With its distinctive sky-lighted roof, undulating wood-slatted lecture hall ceiling, and glass facade-enclosed staircase — the library at Viipuri is one of Aalto’s most important buildings from the years in which he was adventurously exploring a new Modernist vocabulary; indeed, photographs of the building soon made him known around the world,” said Bergdoll.

War and changing borders saw the town the structure was designed for change both countries and names – from Viipuri to Vyborg. It is now known locally as the Central City Alvar Aalto Library.

Under the Soviet regime, few outsiders were able to visit the building and it was threatened by abandonment and “inappropriate renovations”, according to the World Monuments Fund (WMF).

The Finnish Committee for the Restoration of Viipuri Library, whose members include chairman Eric Adlercreutz, Tapani Mustonen, Maija Kairamo, Leif Englund, Maren Nielsen, Olli Helasvuo, Eero Pekkari, Heikki Pekonen, Ben-Roger Lindberg, Aki Schadewitz, and Mariel Pohlman, was formed in 1992 after the fall of the USSR.

They were assisted by the new management of the library, including Tatiana Svetelnikova, Helen Rogozina, and Alexander Batalin.

Completed in 2013, the restoration required cooperation between the Finnish and Russian governments, regional authorities and international funding.

“The restoration organised and executed an impressive international campaign that has ensured the survival and revival of Aalto’s masterpiece by restoring it to its original function as a vibrant municipal library,” said Bergdoll.

The project took two decades and the building was twice listed on the World Monuments Watch list for modern buildings at risk – once in 2000 and once in 2002.

The WMF contributed a grant of $300,000 (£200,000) to restore 58 signature skylights over the reading room and lending library.

“The project reflects the highest standards of scholarship, authenticity, architecture, materials conservation, functionality, social impact, stewardship, and technical imagination,” said a statement from the World Monuments Fund.

Launched in 2008, the Modernism Prize is granted every two years for an architectural or design solution that has preserved or enhanced a Modern landmark or group of landmarks.

It will be presented at New York’s Museum of Modern Art on December 1 by WMF president Bonnie Burnham and Andrew B Cogan, CEO of furniture brand Knoll, which sponsors the prize.

The winners will received $10,000 (£6,200) and a limited edition Mies van der Rohe Barcelona Chair from Knoll.

“Viipuri Library is an iconic modern structure and we are delighted to witness its successful restoration through an international network of funders and professionals,” said Burnham. “It speaks to the fundamental mission of WMF, which was founded on the belief that international cooperation can play a catalytic role in saving important historic sites around the globe.”

Images courtesy of The Finnish Committee for the Restoration of Viipuri Library and Petri Neuvonen.

The post Restoration of Alvar Aalto’s Viipuri
Library wins 2014 Modernism Prize appeared first on Dezeen.

With the influx of bicyclists in urban areas, so comes the problem of misplaced bikes! In a sea of other similar-looking bicycles, this external add-on makes it easy to locate yours. Not only a functional, solar powered LED headlamp for nighttime riding and safety, it also features a radio-controlled beeper/signal to assist in finding your bike. It’s a simplistic addition to any bike that makes a world of difference when you’re ready to go!

Designer: Sun Jin

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Yanko Design
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(A Simple Find-a-Bike System was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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