Photographer: Berta Buzunariz
The Town council of Asiain, a small community located in the municipality of Olza, proposed a simple program when decided to build an extension for the old cemetery. An open air area containing the burial niches and a side construction with the autopsy room and a storage unit.
The limited dimensions of the cemetery and the inexistence of a covered space to provide shade and shelter from the harshness of weather, encouraged to transform the new access into a small pavilion. A prismatic volume, link between the old and the new area, not only used as a roofed platform but also as a module containing the indoor program.
This new element is made of concrete that, aside from functioning as a building element, provides a sober finish to the surfaces. The main fachades has been conceived as a free-flowing latticework built with rectangular steel hollow sections prime and painted. The access is through a large door constructed with the same metallic elements. The autopsy room and the storage room are bounded with light sandwich panels in a soft grey colour.
Reducing the existing wall between the old cemetery and the new extention to 1,50 meters allowed a visual and even a physical connection at the end of the plot. The intervention finalizes with gravel paths and the relocation in the access module of an old renaissance baptismal font.