Forest Cemetery Crematorium, Enskede

There is sometimes a single element in an architect’s oeuvre which sums the whole thing up. With Erik Gunnar Asplund it has to be the portico of the crematorium at the Enskede Cemetery (south of Stockholm), a work which preoccupied him for the last two decades of his life, and which came to fruition at the end of the 1930s.

The moment one enters the burial ground, this portico is visible in the distance, crossing the hill to one side, and suggesting a palisade for assembly. The dark grey granite cross which also stands on the ascending route (a latter-day version of Calvary) hovers in an uncertain position, and introduces a certain tension between the landscape elements and those of the architecture. Even at a great distance, the portico of the crematorium is active in a vast ensemble which includes the sky, the forest, the rolling hillocks, the walkways and the clearings. It is also the head of the main body of the crematorium structure itself...[+]