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Ancestral cemetery

Quoting Platon, Giacometti and the Xi’an warriors, Muka Arquitectura designed the enlargment of a municipal cemetery in Lozoya, Spain, creating a conceptual transition.

MUKA Arquitectura, municipal cemetery enlargment, Lozoya del Valle, 2016

The local goverment of Lozoya needed an intervention in the closing and enlargement of the municipal cemetery. Arquitect Moisés Royo from Muka Arquitectura intervened with a conceptual separation between the ‘visible’ and the ‘invisible’.

Quoting Platon, Giacometti and the Xi’an warriors, Royo decided to create a permeable perimetral closing, allowing the air to cross by, being able to have partial hints of the enclosure. As stone guards that protect humble burials, a combination of granite pilasters driven into the ground were placed in a primitive way, all of them lined up with a separation of eighteen centimeters between each other.

The angular geometry of the new closing gives the possibility to create a new area and to put vehicles into the cemetery. This zone is used as a columbarium and an outdoor praying place with one cypress planted. The bench, the pergola and the columbarium create a structural balance that has its origins in the formal rigour of the project.

The pavement also takes part in this reading, with its different geometries, pointing toward the cemetery’s entry and allowing vegetation to emerge in the granite. Lastly, the entry’s door has been projected to pivot, with a narrower side working as a pedestrian access and another one that is longer from which the vehicle can access. As a result, the door exerts an additional resistance that forces the visitor to slow down.