Cemetery Expansion

Moraleja. Cáceres
Date: 2001

Description
From the earliest times man has been buried given sense to two actions: first, the return of our matter to nature, keeping with the architecture and it`s ruin the distinction of the human, and otherwise the search of the horizon either real or abstract, whether is the line of the sea, the distant mountains or a pure geometric shape that suggest the limits of infinity.

The old cemetery, with its unique enclosure, expressed a sense of wholeness and thus, time stopped. The visitor relationship with the cemetery expansion is structured along the way, so that in each fragment the route establish various evolving relationships. Some are with the horizon, some with shelters, with space of peace and meditation.

It`s a cemetery of fragments to be traveled with memory and forgetting. It talks about a way to understand linear time, consisting of tracks or moments, as the memories of memory. Also allows small individual actions (each burial) join gradually without distorting the common project, always unfinished.

The new cemetery is not entered, but it is climbed up to him, as an old mound. The ascent of this sacred mountain begins once you cross the lake beneath the shade that is housed at the entry and concludes at the top, looking to the faraway mountains of the Sierra de Gata.

Only white appears outwardly the perimeter wall, crowned by a continuous piece of earthy concrete, while the interior is surrounded by the earthy character of concrete that covers the entire surface of the walls, except in the hollows of the white tombstones that seem carved in an old rock.

The structure forms a grid of horizontally elongated rectangles niche burials. This horizontal lines emphasizes the cemetery landscape design and, above all, is more in keeping with the idea of lying person.

Property/Client: Excmo. Ayuntamiento de Moraleja
Architects: Lorenzo Fernández-Ordóñez

Collaborators: Javier Sancho, Eduardo San Nicolas, Lourdes Carrasco
Contractor company: Proyectos ALEXA - HIV
Built area m2: 10.000 m2
Budget: 450.000 €
Construction Manager: Lorenzo Fernández-Ordóñez y Servicios Tecnicos Municipales
Construction Engineer: Raquel García Simal, Aparejador Municipal
Current status: Finalizado 2003