Ossuary Orthen / Buijsenpennock Architects
When much needed landscape maintenance at the 150 year-old cemetery in Orthen required many graves to be emptied, a competition was held to design a new resting place for the remains of 12,000 people. Buijsenpennock Architects responded by designing an ossuary that can be seen as a series of walls, made by a mesh of rough oak columns and beams.
More about the ossuary after the break.
The ossuary, an uncommon building type in the Netherlands (deceased are usually laid to rest in special wells or fields), contains open spaces in the framework for oak boxes that house the remains of the dead. What begins as an open mesh structure will eventually transform to a completely solid entity as more coffins are pushed into the voids. Each coffin is given an identity as the name of the deceased and the dates of birth and death are placed on the along the shorter sides of the box.
The coffins are separated materialistically from the framework as the walls are simply sawn, while the boxes are planed and sanded. Covered in a zinc and glass roof, sunlight enters the long, narrow and especially high corridors. A large courtyard provides a serene atmosphere for those to remember their loved ones.
Project information
Project: Competition Ossuary Orthen
Client: BAi, Den Bosch for Cemetery Orthen, Den Bosch
Architects: buijsenpennock architects (Ard Buijsen, Iris Pennock)
Collaborators: A2 Studio, Rotterdam (renderings); Reynoud Homan (typography)
Year: 2009
Price: 2nd price
Program: last resting place for 12.000 dead people
Gross floor area: 883 m2
Gross content: 5300 m3
Main materials: Oak, zinc, glass
Zumthor called wanted his building back.
Ha ha…couldn’t wait to read the comments when I first saw the images of this project and see how quickly Zumthor was mentioned …ha ha
You can not be serious!
Come on delete this project.
The Swiss Pavilion for Expo 2000 in Hannover transformed in a ossuary…how sad!
Ard Buijsen, Iris Pennock. Please be serious. Copy paste?
Shameless Archinepts!!!!!
P. Zumthor
A bad copy of Peter Zumthor’s Swiss Pavion!
It must be published as a “tribute” or “homage”, it scartches the line between originallity and cheap copy… anyway is a very nice example of how important an architect is in our lives.
OMG, I thought the Heatherwick knock off of the Longchamp store on this site was bad enough. This is a bare-faced, shameless plagiarism. I don’t know why they bothered with the CGI, they could have just cut out some photos from Hannover 2000 and stuck it over their site. Did they think they might be able to sneak this one past us without anyone noticing?
I think this could be beautiful in its own right.. The aesthetics may be similiar but Zumthor doesn’t hold the copyright on construction using stacked timber. I actually find the idea of burial chambers made of timber very interesting, an alternative to the traditional default choice of stone.
Zumthor was in the jury? isn’t it?
Why not put all 94 submissions here: http://bai-s-hertogenbosch.nl/assets/files/DvdA_Archief/DvdA_09/DvdA_Catalogus_Ossuarium_2009.pdf
Zumthor’s son is working???
I just noticed the rendering…
did everyone complained so much when de second concrete building, or the second steel building or the second BRICK building was made?????