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SIGURD LEWERENTZ, A SILENT ARCHITECT
SIGURD LEWERENTZ, A SILENT ARCHITECT
Alison and Peter Smithson were the first to call Lewerentz, Pikionis, Melnikov, the Eames, Coderch, Max Bill and Ralph Erskine, “Silent Architects” in a short but intense texts published in 1988. A silence that is able to include seven different attitudes towards construction but also able to describe seven similar “positions” in the History of Modern Architecture.
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It was basically a silence of words –this architects didn’t explain most of the thoughts around their projects–, but also a silence of the historians interpreting them as an essential part of the Modern Movement.
After the Smithsons, the word silence kept traveling with them, and day by day, their secrets became interpretations, “... which over time, will seep into and charge the narratives of the surface histories ...”
Among all of them, Lewerentz (and Pikionis) lumps together other meanings of silence, more related to space, through light and construction. A silence that gives shape to most of his projects, and it is a key to understanding not only his silent intentions, but also the tectonics that supports them.
Lewerentz didn’t talk that much about his projects, and never devoted himself to teaching, but his architecture is a permanent lecture where the walls, floors, windows ... stones, glass, iron ... become words. Silent words that showed no romantic inclination to change the world order, but rethink some of the construction methods and materials, and not taking the circumstances as they happen.
THE WOODLAND CEMETERY
The winning scheme for the 1915 Woodland Cemetery competition, Lewerentz and Asplund divided the site into a number of densely forested burial grounds that were bounded by serpentine roads and walkways. And while the divisions of the site appear arbitrary, they were not meaningless.
Both the character assigned to the burial grounds and the alleys proposed serve as dramatic illustrations of the central theme the architects had in mind: to establish a symbolic liaison between nature and death.
The Cemetery was conceived as a Woodland burial ground, placing an exclusive emphasis on the state of quietness (Holy calm) that nature could be made to evoke.
For most pine forests it is often remarked that pine trees create halls of pillars, but never has the “pillar resemblance” been greater than it is here. Here the hall is like a cathedral. The graves seem small resting at the foot of the tall pines.
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The forest is treated like a enormous dark interior.
The main operation will be due to open the dense roof and let the sun define the lines and the sites of the landscape project. Theses subtle clearings were to give the visitors visual contact with the most important buildings and parts of the landscape.
All the paths of the Cemetery are spaces in themselves, defined by subtle operations. Walls, pavements, earthworks, cuts through the forest... each landscape mechanism is approaching and joining the pedestrian mourner showing its materiality and providing the path with a theatrical solemnity: – The retaining wall around the cemetery was meant to visually and emotionally prepare the visitor before entering the site. It functioned as a buffer between the surroundings and the cemetery, with the intention that the acoustical and visual disturbances of the train traffic would be minimized. The visitor, in order to enter the cemetery, has to walk (or drive) along a row of short and dense trees, next to this tall wall, feeling its presence, until the unfolding of it, creates the big space of the entrance. – The Way to the Holy Cross is a uphill path which forces the mourners to bent down their heads and look at the astonishing pavement while they slowly ascend through the Biblical landscape of the Holy Cross silhouetted against the sky. – The narrow cut through the forest of the Way of the Seven Wells achieves the same effect, but in the opposite direction. This time the action provokes the mourners to look upwards and follow the cut, descending until the point where the sky meets the ground (at the Portico of the Chapel of the Resurrection).
The buildings of the National Romantic style in Scandinavia were predominantly asymmetrical in plan and elevation, creating a kind of dynamic disequilibrium. Each decision in the Woodland Cemetery seems to follow this mechanism, breaking the frontality of the scene. But in this case, it seems to me that it is used in a
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new way in order to endow the spaces with a more mystical approach, searching for silence and concentration, preparing the visitors for the moment of “visiting” the death. All the events happen tangentially to the paths, slipping around them: up, down, left or right ...
All objects and places: the district of urns, the chapels, the grand portico, the cross, the pool, the ceremonial place and the hill are connected but displaced; the chapels are not centrally placed, nor given a unifying form. The largest chapel is almost hidden behind the monumental portico, and disconnected from it. The path does not lead to the cross. The narrativity of and ordered universe with birth, life, death, funeral, burial and resurrection is repeatedly delayed or denied.
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THE CHAPEL OF THE RESURRECTION
Taking the way to the Seven Wells, a white glimmer at the end of the forest path gradually comes into focus, announcing the presence of a tall limestone portico.
The Chapel of the Resurrection appears in one of the clearings of the forest were light is allowed to enter.
The entrance to the chapel stands behind the north facing portico. The exit is a separate, minor doorway in the west-facing gable. It is clear, therefore, that Lewerentz is building a “Rite of Passage” that started far away, at the northern entrance of the cemetery. As to the chapel itself, the first thing to notice is that the portico that has closed the view of the forest path is not only separated from the Chapel but is set, ever so slightly, at an angle to it.
This intentional position is a subtle mechanism to create a “dynamic disequilibrium” between the Way of the Seven Wells and the northern wall of the chapel. The portico sets the visitor in motion and prepares him/her to a new condition of lightness and emptiness.
The stuccoed wall is a geometric white wall with no openings besides the small door protected under the portico, which is the darker space of the facade. (The visitor enters the chapel through this dark space in the northern wall. No light is allowed to enter with the mourners that could change the lightness of the interior)
The Chapel interior is an empty space, dominated by the presence of a tall baldachino over the altar, strongly lit from the southern window. A Cross is hanging inside of it, protected in its dark space. Here, is where lightness (and its opposite, darkness) meet with the mourners. A silent meeting that was announced throughout the “Rite of Passage”:
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The dark forest, the light clearings, the dark space under the portico, the chiaroscuro of the interior of the Chapel, the lighted baldachino, and the dark space under it, where the Cross is. Finally, life and death (Resurrection) face each other.
Both entrances, (north- south, door-window, visitors-light, life-death) are breaking the static interior. Their position on the walls and the movements they create provide direction to the space and a smooth vibration on its perimeters (walls and floor).
This can be noticed on the interior walls, where the double order of pilasters on each side are slightly pushed by the entrances (north and south), and not facing each other. And as well as in the thin gray marble mosaic of the floor that moves under the visitor with a undulating surface pattern, accentuated by a earthwork which is actually given a slight undulation.
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TWO CHURCHES
The Church of St.Mark’s at Skarpnack –built in the late 1950’s– and the Church of St.Peter at Kipplan –completed when Lewerentz was over 80– went far beyond the limits of “rationalist” reduction of the 1930’s Stockholm Exhibition “White” Wrchitecture. His buildings are a consequence of his own experiences, He remained throughout his productive career inspired by the same ideas and aspirations despite changing modes of expression.
The striking simplicity and deep universality of the two churches in Stockholm and Klippan won for the 80-year-old Lewerentz general respect and even gained him followers both at home and abroad.
In developing both designs, Lewerentz spoke of two things only: the interpretation of the program, and questions of building constructions. But throughout the evolution of them there were endless alterations and on-site revisions, which makes visitors “become witnesses of the extraordinary slow process”.
Both churches tell us about the very moment when the brick was put into the mortar, the skill of the bricklayers, the irregularities in the delivery of the material, frost and sunshine; everything is recorded. The goal here is evidently not conventional neatness but rather “the demonstration of building activities under given local circumstances”.
Each piece of those masonry walls, floors, roofs, is treated with an enormous respect. No piece is to be cut.
Joints play an important role in the construction: the mortar keeps the bricks apart and is the filling material... but could be read just the opposite way, where mortar keeps together and the bricks are the filling pieces... in this way we could see the building as a (masonry) concrete construction.
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ST.MARKS CHURCH
“It is the walls one approaches. There is no obvious way in, it would seem, but we are soon hard up against them”. Nel centenario di Sigurd Lewerentz. Casabella oct. 1986.
Lewerentz is, once again, starting his project far from the site, where the building becomes part of the Landscape. From that point we can already notice two important decisions: – The walls lie among the trees, and with their thickly applied mortar and “bluish-gray-pink” brick they have just the same patchy look of the birch trunks or of the petrified shadows of birches. – The earth of the church is far below any other construction of the surroundings. The complex seems to be “excavated” resting on a low and ancient level. The place is perceived as the area’s center of gravity. Only a century and a half ago this swampy area with its stunted birch trees had been the bottom of a shallow lake.
In order to approach the building, we have to descend through a meandering footpath, marked with stone slabs, to the real ground level of the complex, between the administration building, the church and the community center. There, protected by the walls and the earth we feel once again this element of strangeness and solemnity that we found in the Resurrection Chapel, though it is of a different order, and of a definitely different style.
All the emphasis is again on the perimeter walls which visitors and light have to pierce.
The access to the complex is through a court created by the distance between the long one-story administrative building and the L shape of the community center (parallel to the administrative building) and the Church (with a traditional East-West orientation).
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The entrance to the Parish hall faces the court, and is placed under four volts slightly separated from the building, which allows the light go through and illuminate the wall.
The entrance of the Church is hidden behind the walls convexities, here there are no porticos, only a subtle footpath that disappears in the dark space within the thick walls of the southern facade of the Church.
We enter a cave through a crack on the wall. Surrounded by heavy masonry, the acoustical and light conditions radically change. For a while, the darkness and the echoes of the interior makes feel confused and disoriented.
After a while we get used to the darkness, and slowly, the space and light become visible.
“Lewerentz himself said that a low light-level introduces a factor of delay, slowing down the response at the moment of entering the sanctuary since it takes time for the eye to adapt to the low level of light and to bring into focus the spatial limits and quality of surfaces.” The dilemma of the classical. Collin St.John Wilson. Perspecta 1988. No 24.
The space of the Church is bound by almost the same material. The vaults of the roof, the floor and the walls describe a closed unity that keeps a equilibrium between light and space.
To achieve this homogeneous interior of brick, Lewerentz did not used concrete beams. The Church is constructed mainly with masonry work of high quality.
Being in the empty and silent space, is like being inside a thick and heavy wall which only a few openings will be able to perforate and led the light go through.
In this project Lewerentz, for the first time, used frameless insulating glass windows. An astonishingly simple window that stresses the massive character of the walls.
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Windows are framing the trunks of the birch trees outside, located near the floor in the nave, an exception being the asymmetrical opening near the vault at the rear section of the southern wall, “... that during the summer months a mystical beam of light is directed to the altar”.
Views, light, and visitors find their way in trespassing the thick perimeter. And the interior with its golden means, which fascinated Lewerentz throughout his life, remains Silent (dark and empty).
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ST.PETRI CHURCH IN KLIPPAN
“... and so one spring day in 1963 Lewerentz stepped down off the train in Klippan, where a reception committee awaited him. He was driven to the park and shown the building site. Lewerentz pretended not to hear, but pointed in a direction further in, where he felt the Church would lie. He requested some photos of the park, and then returned home”. Sigurd Lewerentz, architect. Janne Ahlin
Lewerentz was already 80 years old when he received the commission to build
the church of St. Petri, and once again, the project started of the Landscape (but with almost 60 years of experience). What was said about Bjorkahagen, can be said for same wall and simple cubic nature ... but still Klippan is another building, “like two twins grown up in different places, they have been adapted by their local forces”. The former was inside a forest of birches, this one is in the plains of southern Sweden.
The presence of the gravitational at Bjorkhagen, has been here further developed. The thick and heavy walls press down the earth creating a movement as if it were to unite with the landscape.
To reach the entrance, which is commonly used, the visitor must descend a short slope. Inside, a vestibule awaits in striking darkness. Only gradually does the room take form and the walk continues. One’s descent continues within the sanctuary, and at the lowest point in the room stands the great brick altar. The visitor slowly starts to take possession of the space -the way in which it gradually becomes yours in turn becomes entwined with a feeling that you are yourself enveloped in privacy: invited to pray in solitude and in silence.
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The plan-form of the Church, shows the altar surrounded by the priest’s seat, the pulpit, the organ, the choir, the baptismal font, the congregation and the lay-clergy. This centripetal disposition is related to the most ancient, indeed original, form of celebration of the Eucharist in the primitive church, where the altar was placed at the center of the room. (Rudolf Schuarz in his book, Vom bau ther kirche of 1938 used the term “the open circle” to denominate this idea of surrounding the altar, which corresponds closely to the term used by Lewerentz “Circumstantes”.)
But in this space we found two centers: – The altar. The center of the “performance”, and the lowest part of the Church (that is a gravitational center). – The cross-column. The center of the structure, placed in the geometrical center of the room.
The disposition of these two centers are endowing the space with a similar “strangeness and solemnity” that we found in his former projects. “The buildings mystery lies in the discrepancy between its apparent straightforwardness and its actual obliqueness. The harder you look, the more enigmatic it becomes”. The Dilemma of the Classical. Colin St.John Wilson. Perspecta 1988. No.24.
Lewerentz had strongly devoted himself to keep the space empty by stressing the perimeter’s capacity to absorb those centers that are filling the room.
An emptiness that is essential to reach in order to “pray in solitude and in silence”.
The floor that moves under the visitor, cracks and creates the well under the Baptismal shell, and unfolds shaping the altar. The altar is not an object placed in the middle of the room, but a part of the building’s circumstances.
The masonry structure used elsewhere could not save the long distance between walls without massive invasion of the central zone of the Church, Lewerentz was thus led to adopt some form of columnar support. At first, he divided the space with a pair of columns, later he proposed a solution which reduced the degree of interruption to a minimum. A single column supports a short cross beam which in turn supports
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at each extremity a pair of lateral beams whose outer supports lie in the side walls.
“For at one stroke this technical device of column and cross beam thrusts into the center of the Church, a form that irresistibly recalls the central symbol of both the New and the Old Testament –the Tree of Knowledge and the Cross of Redemption–”.
At this moment, when the column becomes Cross, one can feel the silence of the room. What was to be a massive invasion of the structure, finally becomes a symbol of the Church, and no longer troubles its emptiness.
Lewerentz does not use only positive elements, but also “void” elements: This is what objects are made with. The spaces, the air and the volumes are excavated from the objects. From this point of view Lewerentz remind us of Louis Kahn 11, whose work seems dense with this symbiosis of objects and spaces.
Light and Silence were for Kahn the essence of a religious building: light giving architecture a mystical radiance, and silence being “peace of mind as much generated by architectural form as by the serenity associated with church interiors”. “Architecture deals primarily with the making of spaces to serve the institutions of man. In the aura of Silence and Light, the desire to be, to make, to express, recognizes the laws that confirm the possible”. Silence and Light. Kahn, 1969.
“In Louis Kahn’s architecture this space/structure opposition contains a dose of theory and of pedagogy. Kahn wants to talk to us, he wants to be understood. He wants to teach. Lewerentz has chosen the silence of words and the depth in the execution”. Nel centenario di Sigurd Lewerentz. Stefan Alenius. Casabella, oct. 1986 No 528.
CONCLUSION
In most of the writings on Lewerentz, appears the word silence, and many times admirers use it to express different facets of his personality and of his work. Somehow is like a pet expression that helps to relate him with other silent architectures... And so did I.
We know that silence is the absence of sound. But is it possible to reach such silence? and is it possible to build it?
John Cage in his book Silence believes that there is always something to see, and something to hear: “...In fact, try as we may to make silence, we cannot. For certain engineering purposes, it is desirable to have silent a situation as possible. Such a room is called an anechoic chamber, its six walls made of special materials, a room without echoes. I entered one at Harvard University several years ago and heart two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer operation, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation. Until I die there will be sounds”.
So, if silence was the absence of sound, we know, we know that is also a euphemism for the absence of life, and that we can only reach it completely through death, in another space and time, far from earth. Working with the idea of silence, is working in the limits of live, where there is a void, a cut, a breath, a sanctuary where we can move away and reach this mystical state of silence where we can express ourselves. And those places exist, and have written the most important pages of the history of Architecture ... Pyramids, Cemeteries, Temples, Cathedrals, Churches and Chapels. Most of them had a very special attitude toward silence, each one, in its own context, and with its own protagonists.
Silence is frequently used in two different ways to describe Lewerentz architecture: as an idea of void or absence and an idea of darkness or lightness. Two pure architectural concepts -space and light that are extremely related, which the negation of both together bring about the negation of the architectonic experience, but which both limits evoke the presence of the mystic.
“–Tout ce qu’on regarde es faux- wrote Tzara in the first Dada manifesto, there are only two exemptions: one is noise– la representation du bruit devient parfois reellement, objectivement bruit-the other is the opposite of noise: the void”. From lmagenes del Pabellon de Alemania of Jose Quetglas.
For Lewerentz silence was a mystical attitude toward the act of building. Within Lewerentz production, virtually all kinds of projects are represented. But is specially through his religious buildings which awaken an acute consciousness of the aesthetic of absence. His Cemetery designs, Churches and Chapels, testify to a certain symbolist concern with form, indeed a quest for the representational forms of death.
The four projects I have described are empty geometrical units which belong to the landscape or are landscapes themselves. In all of them, the main purpose is to control the piercing of their boundaries –walls or forest– to led light and visitors go through in a certain way (and definitely in a certain amount). He is constantly forcing visitors and light to do, and to experiment, what was exactly decided and drawn. In a way, is not allowed to break the silence of those spaces.
The description of those movements of approaching and trespassing (that can put silence at risk by breaking the unity, allowing the space to flow out, and light, sound and people to flow in) is the description of Lewerentz’ silent Architecture which tries to domesticate them, delaying their appearances and preparing them to be used as part of the Architecture.
