The City of Stockholm invited to an architecture competition about a new crematorium at the Woodland cemetery. Five architecture offices/teams where selected for the competition. The winner of the competition is the proposal A Stone in the Forest by Johan Celsing Arkitektkontor in co-operation with Müller Illien Landschaftsarchitekten.
The other competitors where:
The competition was arranged by the City Cemeteries Administration on behalf of the City of Stockholm. The new crematory is to complement Gunnar Asplund's world-famous Woodland Crematorium dating 1940.
The Woodland Crematorium has managed to operate according to the original concept over the years, thanks to the continual renewal of its technical facilities. The increasing demand for higher standards of technical performance and in the working environment mean that the existing crematorium in Gunnar Asplund's building can no longer be modernized without causing unacceptable changes to his original concept and design.
The City Cemeteries Council therefore decided to move the entire cremation facilities to a new building alongside Asplund's, while yet permitting the necessary functional and technical connections. Asplund's original building with its three chapels will continue as the setting for ceremonial services as before.
The primary competition task was to design a building for this facility to fit with the Woodland Cemetery composition in such a way that the World Heritage status is unaffected. In addition to its necessary technical functions, the new building must also have the qualities of symbolic and sacred expression to receive mourners. It is a matter of the utmost architectural delicacy to design a new building in the setting of Asplund's Woodland cemetery.
The competition ran between June 1st and September 30th 2009. The entries were judged by a jury representing the City Cemetery Administration, the City Museum and the Swedish Association of Architects. The result was published the 18th of December 2009.
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