photo : Arild Vågen, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

A publication was prepared to accompany the exhibition edited by Professors Matt Hall, Hansjörg Göritz (University of Tennessee) and Nathan Matteson (Depaul University) Hall’s role involved inviting all the major scholars on Lewerentz’s work as well as new emerging critics and historians. He also authored the introductory essay, curated and collected the archival material and provided all of the new photography from over ten years of documenting the architect’s work. The cemetery’s design, harmoniously combining architectural structures with the surrounding landscape, was largely influenced by German forest cemeteries like Friedhof Ohlsdorf in Hamburg and Waldfriedhof in Munich, as well as the neoclassical paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. Notable features include a long route through the cemetery, splitting into two paths that lead through diverse landscapes and architectural elements before rejoining, a distinctive granite cross, and the Resurrection Chapel​. Woodland Cemetery Technical Information The portico provides access to a sanctuary oriented east-west, requiring a 90-degree turn after one passes through the entryway. It is elegant in its simplicity, with mosaic tile floor, high ceiling, minimally decorated walls, and window on the southern wall which brings light to the front of the space. While mourners face east toward the altar and bier, above and behind them is a choir loft. The building is exited to the west via a passageway and an undecorated doorway that leads to a sunken burial garden. In turn, one ascends through this area to return to another path and the world beyond. Originally called the City Theater (Stadsteater in Swedish), it was (and remains) widely praised as a Functionalist triumph. “In spite of its size,” Architectural Review opined that, “the auditorium has an air of intimacy.” Educational Theatre Journal judged it “exceptionally well planned.” After a train journey of several hours we arrived at the archive, high up in an office building in the city centre. There were just a few desks and chairs in the small, top-lit room, and a series of folders from the competition entry that we had come to see. We put on the white gloves that had been carefully laid out for us, and opened the delicate papers.

Architect of Death and Life

The Church of St Peter in Klippan is the last major work of Swedish architect Sigurd Lewerentz, and embodies a holistic and obsessive architectural vision. Af Benjamin Wells The colliding coursing of the nave’s floor is a visceral tapestry. Image: Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design ARKM.1973-05-06496 The outer vestibule is separated from the inner by large swing-doors of glass. In the inner vestibule are the cloakrooms, the counters of which have a total length of nearly 400 feet. In the middle of the vestibule, flanked by two broad marble stairs, which lead up to the foyer, stands Thalia, a work by Bror Marklund; he presents her full of life and, in deliberate contrast to convention, as slightly vulgar. The staircases leading up to the foyer are bounded by a white wrought-metal railing, which also runs round the foyer. This balustrade is repeated in the balcony. Along the inner wall of the foyer, beneath the balcony, runs a long series of concertina-doors which lead to the auditorium, while four doors in the inner vestibule lead to the lower stalls. Another three doors connect the foyer with a terrace communicating with the restaurant terrace, which seats 200 guests.

Within the boundaries of the 108.08 ha property are located all the elements necessary to express the Outstanding Universal Value of Skogskyrkogården, including the landscape dominated by a forest of tall pine trees, the Woodland Chapel (1920), the service building designed by Asplund (1923-24), the Chapel of Resurrection designed by Lewerentz (1925), the group of three chapels (Faith, Hope, and the Holy Cross) with common mortuary and crematorium facilities designed by Asplund (1937-1940), the granite cross on the lawn outside the chapels designed by Asplund, and the 4 km-long surrounding granite wall. Its boundaries adequately ensure the complete representation of the features and processes that convey the property’s significance. There is no buffer zone. The property does not suffer unduly from adverse effects of development and/or neglect. A potential threat to the overall experience of the property is the spread of various tree diseases, which can severely damage plantings. The architect tapped into his graphic design skills to fashion the fair’s distinctive wing-shaped logo (a symbolic nod to the idea that Swedish society was moving forward), but also found himself designing exhibition stands, temporary cafés and display homes of the future, as well as the wallpaper, furnishings and musical instruments that he imagined would appear inside. ‘He was involved in the life of the city; not as his functionalist colleagues were. He was always interested in our shallow selves,’ explains Long. ‘I also think it’s to do with imagining the reality of human life – there are a few architects who do that. Architects of the modern period tend to see humanity as a problem to be solved, whereas Lewerentz saw us in our appetites.’ Then [Colin St John] Sandy Wilson’s book came out, so that was another narrative, a more phenomenological reading of Lewerentz’s work.The final chapter, ‘Lund: A Living Legend’, documents Lewerentz’s finaldecade in semi-retirement as a widower. This is the image of the architect – as “a master of his trade,but also a resistance fighter” - that we are familiar with from the previous books about him, by HakonAhlberg and Janne Ahlin.Folke Edwards, art critic and head of Lund’s art gallery, writing in 1966declared, “Lewerentz appears as the great liberator, the enviable Master, with free hands to create superbarchitectural works of art and to realise the bittersweet dream that almost every architect harbours. Hehas become a symbol of the freedom that has been lost.” Lewerentz, who was born in Bjärtrå, Ångermanland, in northern Sweden in 1885 and died in Lund 1975, is a mythologised figure in the history of 20 th century architecture. Arguably Sweden’s most distinguished modernist, his influence is admired today by a generation of the world’s leading architects. A few of us were teachers so our students got interested in it as well. It’s interesting that it was in Britain that there was this real attention to Lewerentz’s work, because much later, in Holland and in Switzerland, there were reassessments of Alison and Peter Smithson, let’s say, and Lewerentz was part of that somehow. His connection to the Smithsons and to Brutalism is rather slight, I think, but they knew the work, they talked about it. Edited by Kieran Long, Director of ArkDes, and Johan Örn, curator of collections at ArkDes, and co-edited by Mikael Andersson, architectural historian and critic, this landmark book will be a significant moment of reassessment. An accompanying exhibition opening at ArkDes on 1st October 2021, curated by Kieran Long and designed by Caruso St John, will be the first major monographic exhibition of Lewerentz’s work in over 30 years.

The goal of this exhibit and publication was to situate the building’s position within a greater body of Scandinavian and Euro-pean architecture whose continued lineage remains valid within contemporary architectural practice and discourse. Through invited writings from most of the existing scholars of his work. Along with Göritz and Matteson, Hall is working on an expanded version of this content for publication with ACTAR, Barcelona in 2020. Long, Kieran, Johan Örn, and Mikael Andersson, editors (2021). Sigurd Lewerentz. Architect of Death and Life. Zürich: Park Books AG, 2021. (ISBN 9783038602323) How architects can put together a business continuity plan How architects can put together a business continuity plan The books are published predominantly in English and German and thanks to a competent and extensive sales and marketing network, our program is distributed worldwide. The company is independently owned and run by dedicated employees who bring their various strengths and experience to bear on their work. In the end, it is the solemn aspect of Lewerentz that most defines him. With St Peter’s, Adam Caruso has said: “He is compelling us to confront the condition of our existence, all of the time.” But without his sensuous and playful side, Lewerentz’s spirituality would become ponderous and his solemnity tedious. For, after all, frivolity is also part of existence.The church manages to sit independent of style and tradition, quietly questioning and subverting a multitude of architectural and constructional norms to form a deeply imaginative and particular building. This authoritative new monograph on Sigurd Lewerentz is based on extensive research undertaken at ArkDes, Sweden’s national center for architecture and design, where his archive and personal library are kept. It features a wealth of drawings and sketches, designs for furniture and interiors, model photographs, and more from his estate, most of which are published here for the first time, alongside new photographs of his realized buildings. Essays by leading experts explore Lewerentz’s life and work, his legacy, and lasting significance from a contemporary perspective.

Lewerentz’s St Peter’s Church, Klippan, built 1962-66: ‘an object of veneration’. Photograph: Johan Dehlin Campo-Ruiz, Ingrid (2013). Less or More? The Construction of Lewerentz’s Kiosk in the Malmö Cemetery. Progreso, Proyecto, Arquitectura 8 (2013): 132-147. ISSN 2171-6897. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12795/ppa.2013.i8.09The exhibition and the book are the result of four years of research. The majority of the objects in the exhibition are drawn from ArkDes’ own formidable collection, which will be shown alongside hitherto unknown or never previously exhibited objects that have been discovered in travels by the research team across the country.