We found out what the new columbarium in Radom will look like. The winning concept in the competition was prepared by the BDR Architekci team. We described it yesterday HERE. This time we are publishing the design that won second place in the competition.
The competition task was to design a place where 2,000 people can be buried. The columbarium will be located in the central part of the municipal cemetery in Radom. The project also involves cleaning up the area where construction of a chapel and funeral home began in the 1980s. The project could not be completed and at the time only the foundations were built.
Second place in the competition was won by the concept of the studio rewizja grupa projektowa (Krzysztof Grześków, Paul Cetnarski, Bartosz Bubniewicz, Karolina Tadek). The architects analysed the plan of the necropolis, which was built according to a design by Ryszard Rodak. More than 60 years ago, a design was created with a main axis from the entrance and a layout of alleys perpendicular to it with trapezoid-shaped plots, which – as a result – converge radially with a central square. The square is reminiscent of the star-shaped foundation of the city of Kharlsrue, with the central part of the square never realised and the cold storage facility built there – disrupting the geometric purity of the plan.
In the central part of the square, at the intersection of the main axes, a tower (columbarium) was located. The name columbarium comes from the Italian word “colombaia” (“dovecote”). Originally these were free-standing structures in the form of towers, and in medieval Europe they were a symbol of status and power. Their possession was regulated by law. The tower-columbarium on Firlej has the potential to become a symbol of one of the largest necropolises in Poland and to sort out all the urban planning problems that have built up in recent years.
A regular square paved with basalt paving blocks, it has been illuminated by points of light arranged on a grid that emphasises its form. Through its centre runs a ramp leading to level -1 (at its lowest point it reaches 2.4 m below ground). This is where the path of bidding farewell to the deceased begins. Descending the 40 m ramp, we approach the tower consisting of 1,776 prefabricated ferro-concrete elements. These are the frames into which an urn with an engraved insert is placed during burial. Initially empty, the tower is filled with the ashes of the deceased, it is the memory of them that creates the final appearance of the tower.
The niche that surrounds the tower allows a moment of silence and separation from the rest of the people visiting the cemetery. In addition, the first six rows of prefabricated elements are left empty, making it possible to place flowers and candles in them, ensuring that the niche will always be a place of celebration for those whose ashes are buried here, the project’s authors explain.
Urns are seated in the tower using a scissor lift, filling an increasing number of empty spaces over time. As the years go by, the tower becomes full and light enters it only through the ashes of those who have passed away, the verticality emphasises their afterlife – the communication between the human and the supra-human.
design: revision design group: Krzysztof Grześków, Paul Cetnarski, Bartosz Bubniewicz, Karolina Tadek
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