The Service building (which now hosts the visitor center) was designed by Gunnar Asplund and has puzzled many people due to its unusual design. In contrast with most buildings of this category, the architect clearly succeeds avoiding banality. The boathouse is still used for its original purpose and part of the upper floor can be rented for events. 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 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.

photo : Arild Vågen, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia CommonsLewerentz was born at Sandö in the parish of Bjärtrå in Västernorrland County, Sweden. He was the son of Gustaf Adolf Lewerentz and Hedvig Mathilda Holmgren. In the words of Adam Caruso, designer of the exhibition: “Lewerentz’s late projects represent an unprecedented integration of making and thought. Like Matisse, who advised young painters to cut off their tongues and communicate with brush, paint and canvas, Lewerentz was famously laconic. He did not teach and few of his own project descriptions survive. He built.” Campo Ruiz, Ingrid. Lewerentz in Malmo: Intersections between Architecture and Landscape. (2015). Doctoral Thesis, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. The colliding coursing of the nave’s floor is a visceral tapestry. Image: Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design ARKM.1973-05-06496

Those unfamiliar with Sigurd Lewerentz may be intrigued by how he is characterised in books and articles. Despite being one of Sweden’s most admired modernist architects, he is regularly described as ‘enigmatic’, ‘mythical’ or even ‘obscure’. Born in Bjärtrå, northern Sweden, in 1885, Lewerentz was indeed a quiet figure; he published almost nothing about his built projects, and would reject invitation after invitation to speak at international events – a stark contrast to his publicity-savvier contemporaries, such as architect Erik Gunnar Asplund. How can architects integrate shading to combat overheating? How can architects integrate shading to combat overheating? Long, Kieran, Johan Örn, and Mikael Andersson, editors (2021). Sigurd Lewerentz. Architect of Death and Life. Zürich: Park Books AG, 2021. (ISBN 9783038602323)

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.” 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. 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. In common with Ingmar Bergman and Astrid Lindgren, whom, despite theirinternational critical celebrity, were often at odds with Swedish society, here is something weird aboutLewerentz’s critical neglect at home, which this book brings into high relief. To a degree, the famousSwedish Model - of political tolerance, social stability and conformity - seems strangely unable to copewith outliers of huge talent and conviction like these. All three artists’ work represent a powerful spirit offree creative play, co-existing with a passionate and fastidious dedication to craft: two things that areusually seen to be in opposition in a Rationalist world view.The early critical reaction to Lewerentz by“functionalist” critics was often quite violently hostile in fact.