Sigurd Lewerentz

Sigurd Lewerentz ( born July 29, 1885 in Sandoe, † December 29, 1975 in Lund ) was a Swedish architect of the modern age, which was mainly known for its cemetery and church buildings.

Training

After his education at the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg 1907-09 he practiced with Bruno Möhring in Berlin and from Th Fischer and R. Riemerschmidt in Munich. On study trips to Austria and Italy he became acquainted with the beginning of the neoclassical interest in Karl Friedrich Schinkel. This influence is most evident in the Resurrection Chapel at the Stockholm Woodland Cemetery Skogskyrkogården again.

Work

In collaboration with Gunnar Asplund, he passed in 1915 at the Stockholm Woodland Cemetery, where he built the Chapel of Resurrection in 1926 in the style of strict classicism. As his most personal work is considered, however, the cemetery Östra kyrkogården in Malmö. Here he had responsibility for all new construction and renovations 1916-1969. In 1930, he was with Gunnar Asplund one of the prominent architects of the Stockholm exhibition on the style of modernism in Sweden had their breakthrough.

In 1944, he was planning along with Erik Lallerstedt and David Helldén musical theater Malmö. His final breakthrough he reached late in his life with the construction of churches in strict tile shapes, such as St. Mark's Church in Markuskyrkan Björkhagen in the Stockholm suburb of Skarpnäck or the St. Peter Church in Klippan.

The last years

Sigurd Lewerentz was to old age active in his profession. His late works are entirely exempt from any decoration frameless window openings in untreated concrete and consciously visible technical installations such as electric cables and ventilation ducts, as a means of architectural expression, in the style of brutalism. This style element is used in the church of St. Mark clearly. He was for 1962, the most distinguished Swedish architectural award, the Kasper Salin Prize awarded.

One of his last works was a flower kiosk at Östra kyrkogården in Malmö. A raw concrete block with a steeply inclined pent roof, stylistically far away from the Resurrection Chapel of the forest cemetery in Stockholm fifty years before. Lewerentz was one of the most stubborn and most prominent personalities of the Swedish 20th century architecture, repeatedly under the trend and at the same time on its own track.