Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life

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In the mid 1940s Lewerentz oversaw the completion of the Chapels of St. Knut and St. Gertrud, and the Malmö City Theatre – two projects that he had worked on for many years. His notoriety came with the late churches, however: St. Marks in Björkhagen (1960), and St. Peters in Klippan (1966). When Lewerentz died in Lund in 1975, he was regarded as a legend of Swedish architecture. Lewerentz, who was born in Bjärtrå, Ångermanland, in northern Sweden in 1885 and died in Lund 1975, is a mythologised figure in the history of 20 th century architecture. Arguably Sweden’s most distinguished modernist, his influence is admired today by a generation of the world’s leading architects.

Campo-Ruiz, Ingrid (2015). Construction as a Prototype: the Novel Approach by Sigurd Lewerentz to Using Building Materials, Especially in Walls and Windows, 1920-72. Construction History 30 Nov (2015): 67-86. ISSN 0267-7768. Opened in 1944, the Malmö Opera’s plate glass, marble, and steel-framed front facade is approached via a white marble plaza with parkland to its rear. Art is present throughout the complex, including statues by Carl Eldh and a stage curtain by Elsa Gullberg Textile Studio.

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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. Hart, Vaughan (1996). ‘Sigurd Lewerentz and the ‘Half-Open Door’’, Architectural History: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, vol.36, pp.181-196.

After a train journey of several hours we arrived at the archive, high up in an office building in the city centre. There were just a few desks and chairs in the small, top-lit room, and a series of folders from the competition entry that we had come to see. We put on the white gloves that had been carefully laid out for us, and opened the delicate papers. From Roman mosaics and Tudor tiles to Antarctic snow and gri... From Roman mosaics and Tudor tiles to Antarctic snow and grit: the specialists that are key to our work Mark FrancisKieran, to start, would you like to say something about the purpose and range of the exhibition? 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 (2015). From Tradition to Innovation: Lewerentz’s Designs of Ritual Spaces in Sweden, 1914-1966. The Journal of Architecture 20/1 (2015): 73-91. ISBN 978-1-138-80283-4. DOI:10.1080/13602365.2015.1009483. Sigurd Lewerentz (1885—1975) was involved in shaping the 20th century’s architecture early on but did not achieve the same immediate recognition that his colleague Gunnar Asplund enjoyed. His genius was really only recognized much later on, particularly in his churches Markus Church in Björkhagen and St Petri Church in Klippan, which brought him his own acclaim. To this day, he remains one of Sweden’s most celebrated architects abroad. Asplund devoted himself mainly to the buildings. The small Woodland Crematorium — built in 1935–40 — has been regarded as a central work in his oeuvre and the Nordic Classicism style of that period. The small chapel, set on a Tuscan peristyle and featuring a gold statue on the roof by Carl Milles, was, in fact, derived from a “primitive hut” that Asplund had happened to see in a garden at Liselund. In 1994 the Woodland Cemetery became one of the few works of twentieth-century architecture to be placed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Lewerentz 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.

Like other great mid-century architects – Gio Ponti, for example – he worked fluidly between media. He designed everything from landscapes to churches to government office buildings to factories to shops to furniture to advertising posters to wallpaper. He was sometimes questioned for the superficiality of some of this work, for what critics called his “pseudo-functionalism”. He also moved easily between historical and modern styles and between handmade craft and industrial production. There was, for him, no catastrophic conflict between the two. Although most of the Woodland Cemetery was completed by 1940, Lewerentz continued to be involved with architectural and landscape projects there until finishing the Remembrance Garden in 1961.Malmö is Sweden’s third largest city with about 170,000 inhabitants. It is also the seat of the provincial Government of fertile, wealthy Scania, which is one of the most densely populated parts of the country. When designing the new theatre, therefore, the promoters have not only taken Malmö’s own population into account but the entire province’s – one might even say the whole of south Sweden’s population.

He continued to work at competition proposals and furniture designs until shortly before his death in Lund, Sweden during 1975. [6] [7]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 The book is organised into three parts: texts, followed by new photography and then extensive archivalvisual material. Long’s colleague at ArkDes, the architectural historian-curator Johan Örn, whose previousresearch has dealt in detail with the role of interiors in 20th century Swedish architecture, has informed theapproach taken here. Örn’s essay, ‘Sigurd Lewerentz: The State ofArchitecture’ is organised chronologically as an “architectural biography” and draws heavily on thearchive of his drawings and professional correspondence housed at ArkDes.