St. Thomas Morus

Columbarium

The Catholic Mourning Centre and Columbarium St. Thomas Morus Foundation in Hamburg-Stellingen has announced a competition of ideas for the construction of a columbarium in the parish community centre.

Frame

For the planning of the new columbarium in St. Thomas Morus, the church and inner courtyard were made available to the community. The design brief was to create space for a total of 1,500 urns without significantly changing the character of the given space through extensive interventions.

Draft

Our concept refers to these specifications and extends them in the design by the spiritual component, which creates a contemplative atmosphere.

The church will be retained as a place of worship, but like the inner courtyard of the community centre it will be carefully included in the planning. The aim is to create a conceptual connection between sacred space and columbarium that meets the requirements of both areas.

The relationship between the liturgical use of the church space and its function as a columbarium is taken into account by the concept, supplementing and completing the sacred space with the area of farewell.

In both the non-material and material sense, the design with its transparency alludes to a penetration of life and death. Inside the columbarium, this transition can be experienced through a new, translucent access to the church interior. The existing interior and exterior areas of the mourning centre merge with the new urn walls to form a flowing sequence of rooms.