Sited in the grounds of the Hydron water company in Zwijndrecht, this combined cemetery and funeral building is a place for the dead and for the living. It is a place where one can dwell on the meaning of the moment, a place where death can be a part of our daily lives. The task I set myself was to create an environment for successive rituals of a personal nature. To this end I developed a spatial scenario that deals with the transition from day-to-day life to the experience of death and mourning. A key theme in the project is the movement of the living as a means of visualizing the opposition between life and death. The architecture seeks to accompany this movement the way music accompanies a dancer.

The chosen site borders on a residential area and is wedged between the ring dike and the Oude Maas river. Key to the project is the potent force field thrown up at the border between daily life and the cemetery. The burial mounds are designed in such a way as to lend intimacy to those visiting a grave, as well as tying the design visually to its setting. Visitors are not immediately confronted with the graves on entering the cemetery, so that this is also a place for those wishing to temporarily escape the workaday bustle.

The building directly adjoins the ring dike as a literal bridge between daily life and the place for death. It is configured as a concatenation of precisely defined spaces which give the bereaved the opportunity to greet one another, take their leave of the deceased individually, reassemble and pay their last respects together before accompanying the deceased to the final resting-place. The move from one ritual to the next is made palpable by the physical distance between the rooms and by the transition from inside to outside or vice versa. The lines of movement followed by the bereaved, the deceased and the staff are kept strictly separate so as not to disturb the funerary ritual. It is only at the moments of individual and communal leave-taking that the lines of bereaved and deceased coincide at the chapel of rest and the assembly room respectively.

On the side to the Oude Maas river, the cemetery borders on a much frequented footpath. Informal exits allow visitors to briefly escape the cemetery and enjoy the view of Dordrecht and its shipping, while the pedestrian passing by is invited in for a moment's respite at the pool with a prospect of the old water tower. The water tower will itself be open to the public, offering them a panoramic view of the surroundings.

Place of education: AvB Rotterdam
Specialization: architecture
Tutors: Hans Moor, Jacob Voorthuis