Cemetery in Dolni Brezany

This place could be characterized as a landscape park with a cemetery, or a cemetery in a landscape park. It emerged out of a creative symbiosis of the site, people and ideas. Exceptional events touching the spiritual are usually not about money, monumentality or the importance and status of the client. This includes the new park and also this cemetery in Dolní Břežany. The park is slowly being inhabited, it is getting used to its occupants and they are getting used to it. It will be a similar process with the cemetery, only the ‘getting used to’ will have a different dimension. The new cemetery is slightly non-traditional, it does not stand alone, it forms part of a varied landscape, continuing from and connecting with the village, the fields and the valley of Břežany. Conceptually, it takes guidance from the history of the village and its occupants over the ages – from the Celts, the Slavs, up to Christians. In the end, our aim is for it to be a place of – not only the last – meeting, an open, positive place, not exclusively a site of memory. The basic outline is a linden alley shaped as a cross and having four oaks (sacred Celtic trees) at its center, from which stone walls and hornbeam walls radiate outwards. The composition alludes to the sun (or Celtic) cross as one of the oldest symbols of our civilization. Cross and circle, vertical and horizontal lines, balance, harmony, all intertwined. The cemetery gates open to the four cardinal directions, highlighted by integrated glass strips. North is black, the south red, the east blue and the west white.