Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life

Product Information

This substantial, beautifully designed book offers the most comprehensive survey to date of Lewerentz’s achievements in all fields of his multifaceted work.

Lewerentz completely disregarded conventional building standards in his commitment to a singular architectural ambition, using unusual and bespoke methods of building and detailing throughout the project. Lewerentz also created furnishings and fixtures for the building through BLOKK (later renamed IDESTA), an interior design and architectural hardware firm he co-founded during this period. 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.”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 architects’ use of the natural landscape created an extraordinary tranquil beauty environment that had a profound influence on cemetery design throughout the world.The basis for the route through the cemetery is a long route leading from the ornamental colonnaded entrance that then splits, one way leading through a pastoral landscape, complete with a large pond and a tree-lined meditation hill, and the other up to a large detached granite cross and the abstract portico of the crematorium and the chapels of the Holy Cross, Faith, and Hope. The office building for the Riksförsäkringsverket, the National Insurance Board [1932], was decisively important as well. It’s categorically different from other modern office buildings; it’s a palazzo type, in a way, with three facades facing the city—all more or less identical, one with the entrance in it—and then an oval glass curtain-walled interior. There’s nothing like it in Sweden. German architect Wilfried Wang recently praised its “invention of a cyclical procession for the mourners to affirm the continuity of life.” Fernández Elorza, Héctor. Asplund versus Lewerentz. (2014). Doctoral Thesis, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

Campo-Ruiz, Ingrid (2013). Less or More? The Construction of Lewerentz’s Kiosk in the Malmö Cemetery. Progreso, Proyecto, Arquitectura 8 (2013): 132-147. ISSN 2171-6897. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.12795/ppa.2013.i8.09 The church manages to sit independent of style and tradition, quietly questioning and subverting a multitude of architectural and constructional norms to form a deeply imaginative and particular building.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. Designed by award-winning graphic designer Malmsten Hellberg, this new book features new photography of all of Lewerentz’s major works by the architect and architectural photographer Johan Dehlin, as well as never-before-seen drawings and plans for buildings, furniture and interiors from Lewerentz’s collection at ArkDes. 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.

Four years of new research by ArkDes curator Johan Örn reveals an entirely new picture of Lewerentz, moving away from the cliché of the uncompromising, lone maestro, and painting a picture of an artist constantly in tune with and adapting to his time, always collaborating and with a restless curiosity about the modern metropolis and its possibilities. The research for the exhibition was something of a detective story. We consulted a wide range of archives and donors to see what narratives could be found beyond ArkDes’ own, very large Lewerentz archive. We travelled across the country looking for traces of the architect; one such trip was to a regional archive in Gothenburg, which we had heard might hold material related to competitions that Lewerentz entered but did not win. 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.Described as aloof and stubborn in private, he did little writing or public speaking. Likewise, his buildings “have a language of their own,” suggests Swedish architect Janne Ahlin, “that is not easy to translate into spoken or written words.” Enigmatic but fascinating, which explains why Ahlin has written exhaustively about the man and his works. 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. This authoritative new monograph on Sigurd Lewerentz is based on extensive research undertaken at ArkDes, Sweden’s national centre for architecture and design, where his archive and personal library are being kept. It features a wealth of drawings and sketches, designs for furniture and interiors, model photographs etc. from his estate, most of which published here for the first time, as well as with newly taken photographs of his realised buildings. Essays by leading experts explore Lewerentz’s life and work, his legacy and lasting significance from today’s perspective. How can architects integrate shading to combat overheating? How can architects integrate shading to combat overheating? Designed during the late 1920s and early 1930s, the rectangular, boxy office building has a smooth, light stucco facade with symmetrical “punched” windows, a pattern reminiscent of an Italian Renaissance palazzo, albeit without the frills. The only applied decoration is a relief of the Swedish coat of arms above the main entrance.