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The new buildings for the crematorium and cemetery maintenance services are conceived as horizontally placed architectural bodies forming part of the park-like green areas of the cemetery facilities at Thun-Schoren.

The new crematorium opens out via a gate-like entrance gesture into the depths of the green area. The simple architectural body opens like a portico building with a projecting roof towards the existing cemetery, and at the same time closes it off towards the south. With the panorama of the Alps as a background, the building forms a built horizon with a tranquil monumental quality. The new crematorium is a wooden structure that encloses the reinforced concrete furnace chambers.

The façade, with its pre-patinated timber formwork, incorporates references to the local farmhouse tradition. Only the most prominent elements of the entrance façade and the striking frieze on the projecting roof are made of thin fibre-cement panels. With its emphatically horizontal extension and delicate, almost fragile material quality, the crematorium suggests dignity and appropriate monumentality, but without appearing heavy. In the interior, the foyer and visitors’ corridor are clad in natural-wood panelling. The laying-out room and the anteroom to the furnace are formulated as ‘front rooms’, also with cladding in large-format wooden panels.

2015
Location: Thun-Schoren cemetary, Switzerland
Programme: Crematorium
Client: Municipality of Thun
Net Surface: 1960 m2
Competition
Project Status: Not built