The Woodland Cemetery
Two young architects won the competition in 1915 for a new cemetery in an old gravel pit. Over 25 years they shaped a landscape of pine forest, grassy hills and chapels, from Asplund’s small Woodland Chapel to the large crematorium with its portico. A World Heritage Site since 1994.
In the early 20th century Stockholm needed a new cemetery, and the city bought land in Enskede with pine forest and old gravel pits. An international competition was held in 1914–1915, and the two young architects Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz won with a design that made use of the forest instead of felling it. The idea was that the graves would lie among the trees and that death would be met in nature, not in a paved park. Work proceeded in stages over more than twenty years. The architects designed the landscape, paths, chapels and details, and the collaboration was close at first but was gradually divided up. Lewerentz took particular responsibility for the landscape, Asplund for the large buildings.
The Woodland Cemetery consists of several parts that form a sequence of experiences. From the main entrance a long paved path runs along a wall towards the great granite cross and on towards the crematorium. The crematorium, designed by Asplund in the late 1930s, has three chapels named Faith, Hope and the Holy Cross, and in front of them stands a large open portico with the sculpture The Resurrection by John Lundqvist. On a nearby hill lies the Meditation Grove, a ring of trees shaped by Lewerentz and visible from the whole site. The Woodland Chapel of 1920, Asplund’s first building here, has a steep, black shingled roof and a white dome inside. Lewerentz designed the Chapel of the Resurrection, an elongated chapel in classical style further into the site.
Asplund died in 1940, shortly after the crematorium had been inaugurated, and he himself is buried in the cemetery, as is Greta Garbo, among others. Since 1994 the Woodland Cemetery has been a World Heritage Site, one of the few 20th-century World Heritage Sites in Sweden and an example of how architecture and landscape can merge. It has influenced cemeteries and memorial sites in many countries, where the idea of the forest as a burial ground has been taken up. Asplund and Lewerentz later went their separate ways: Asplund designed the Stockholm Public Library and the Stockholm Exhibition, while Lewerentz later built St Mark’s Church and the church in Klippan. The cemetery is managed by the City of Stockholm and is still in use, and the landscape is carefully tended to preserve the long sightlines.