Application of the current knowledge from research and development of the burial methods and their impact on designing or transforming contemporary cemeteries in the Czech republic

Abstract

Considerable transformation of the burial method at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries is apparent from the existing results of research in the developments of burial and funeral architecture, when after centuries controlled by the church – due to social and political changes – gradual secularisation of the society and subsequent desacralisation of funeral rituals started appearing. This phenomenon, as well as other aspects (e.g. Josephine reforms in 1782) brought about a change in the approach to newly established cemeteries but also the necessity to define areas for new burial methods and constructing new building types of funeral architecture. The position of necropolis is also changing as the society understands it, and its inclusion not only in the organism of towns but also in everyday life of town and municipality citizens. Thus, not only new but mainly original cemeteries are searching for their new position in the society. Studio papers try to react to this situation written by students of the master degree of the specialisation Architecture and civil engineering at the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the VŠB - Technical University in Ostrava, led by prof. Ing. arch. Petr Hrůša, doc. Ing. Martina Peřinková, Ph.D. and Ing. arch. Klára Frolíková Palánová, Ph.D. Students try to view necropolis in an innovative way and give them a new dimension to succeed and become adequate public or semi-public space of cities and municipalities. The contribution represents starting points of possible solutions on case studies, such as transformation of a cemetery in Ostrava on the Hulváky Hill, the design of establishing a new cemetery in open space near the municipality of Velichovky, including the design of a funeral hall, situating a new urn grove in the place of a former cemetery – the current park – a part of which is the design of a new crematorium in Nový Jičín and extension of possibilities for placement of ashes and designs supporting the development of funeral tourism in the Olšany Cemeteries in Prague.