International Architecture Competition

Columbarium -
The Chamber of Memories

Results

Foreword

Competition organisers

Columbarium - 
The Chamber of Memories

Official Partners

Columbarium - 
The Chamber of Memories

Bee Breeders Competition Organisers is excited to announce the results of its ‘Columbarium – The Chamber of Memories’ competition.

Participants were invited to submit designs for a columbarium of 500 niches and a comprehensive landscape design solution for the Forest Cemetery in Riga, Latvia. The event was planned in collaboration with the Riga City Council in Latvia, which has expressed an interest in constructing one of the winning submissions. It was requested that design solutions be long-lasting and consider the best of green practices.

The Forest Cemetery has been in use for over a century and became a memorial cemetery for those that died fighting during World War I. The site contains many sculptural memorials and tombstones dedicated to the important and influential figures entombed within the cemetery, including notable Latvian politicians, military, and public figures.

Bee Breeders collaborated with a strong jury panel comprising: James Biber, an architect and partner of New-York based Biber Architects which has completed projects including the USA Pavilion for Expo Milano 2015; Marta Frazão, Filipe Rodrigues, and Inês Vicente, Partners at Atelier Data, a Lisbon-based office; Ricardo Gomes, partner of KWY.studio; Lydia Kallipoliti, an Assistant Professor at the Cooper Union, author of The Architecture of Closed Worlds (2018), the Head Curator of the upcoming Tallinn Architecture Biennale and principal of ANAcycle thinktank; Katie MacDonald, cofounder of After Architecture and Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia; and Angelo Renna, an architect and author of the recent book Monkey Factor – Small stories for a reconciliation with nature.

Bee Breeders, along with its jury panel, congratulates the winning participants, and thanks the designers from around the world that submitted an outstanding range of ideas.

1st Prize Winner +
Client Favorite

Project name

HALO

Authors

Christopher Taylor

South Africa

Why do you enter architecture
competitions?

We find it necessary to participate in architecture competitions as they offer a chance to exercise and challenge our design capability within a limited time frame. They can also provide a diverse and interesting array of briefs that are not normally on offer to us professionally.

Jury feedback summary

Halo is a proposal for a circular burial chamber, sunken into the cool underground to limit its visual impact. Its form and symmetry were chosen to establish a sense of serenity and calm. The form is centered on a pond, its roof planted with flowers chosen for their various bloom periods, creating an ever-changing crown of colors and fragrances related to the changing seasons. The jury commented: “A spiritual and elegant proposal. The idea of the “flower circle” transforms the area into a place that commemorates all forms of life. There is conceptual simplicity in the way the design’s section carries through the concept to realization. The project interestingly combines a number of motives that invite the visitor to contemplate life and time and finiteness: water mirroring the sky, the sunken setting in the ground, the flower bed blooming and decaying throughout the seasons, and the circular arrangement around a central space. The design elegantly deconstructs the notion of a sacred place, playing with the idea of interment below ground, light as a spiritual element and nature working its way into the columbarium while creating a satisfying equality among all those interred. An elegant and peaceful space of contained memories.” One design recommendation is to consider an organization of niches that is more experimental and less traditional. 

2nd Prize Winner

Project name

UNDER A BLANKET OF PLANTS

Authors

Mengru Wang
Rachel Reinhard

United States

Why do you enter architecture
competitions?

Continue to challenge ourselves as designers. Exploration of details in design. Details can be small, but the details always matter.

Jury feedback summary

Under a Blanket of Plants references Latvian folklore that regards death as a celebration of life that is one with nature. It proposes a new ground plane of gently rolling hills pocketed by niches that extend deep into the ground. The modulation of the landscape defines a series of spaces that, according to the designer, “feel at once intimate and expansive.” According to the jury: “The idea to accommodate the columbarium niches in an innovative way, under a gentle rolling hills landscape, makes this proposal unique and special. It is a place to celebrate life and death, and life again. It subtly reforms the landscape and creates a place of memory and recollection, while also allowing new wild forest life to flourish. It manages to be inconspicuous and unique at the same time, blurring the notions of natural and artificial using a minimum of elements.” It is recommended that the ground section be further explored, both in order to access the niches as well as the ground composition, since it would require massive land forming.

3rd Prize Winner +
BB GREEN AWARD +
BB STUDENT AWARD

Project name

Urn field - Line and decomposition

Authors

Matej Gurka
Karol Gregor
Andrea Bočková

University

Technical university of košice
+176 points Buildner University Rankings!

Slovakia

Why do you enter architecture
competitions?

This was my first time I ever evolved into an international architectural competition. I was looking for something new after several years of working on multiple projects, sometimes at the same time.

Jury feedback summary

Urn Field-Line and Decomposition is a proposal for a linear stone path that symbolically links life with death and nature. A long wall that also serves as a bench for sitting, references the line between life and death, with a field of pavers to one side that dissolve into the greenery, representing the journey of a return to nature - a visual decomposition made of urns mixed with natural stones. The jury responded: “A seemingly modest intervention, this project does a lot with a small amount of material, to create an intimate and spiritual intervention in strong dialogue with the surrounding forest. The project's use of stone makes it feel connected to the land and to geological scales of time beyond the short lifespan of man.”

Honorable mentions

VIEWclose HONOURABLE MENTIONS

Project Name

RELIEF

University

Poznan university of technology
+72 points Buildner University Rankings!

Country

Poland

Project authors

Michalina Linkowska
Zuzanna Zdanowicz
Joanna Spychała

Project Name

¨A memory sustains us¨

Country

Uruguay

Project authors

Felipe Vázquez

Project Name

the earth wall

University

Hochschule darmstadt university of applied sciences
+72 points Buildner University Rankings!

Country

Germany

Project authors

Martynas Degutis

Project Name

The Fence

Country

Spain

Project authors

Javier Roig Iglesias

Project Name

White memories

University

Odessa state academy of civil engineering and architecture
+72 points Buildner University Rankings!

Country

Ukraine

Project authors

Zhenya Zhenev

Project Name

Laminated Boundaries

University

Rhode island school of design (risd)
+72 points Buildner University Rankings!

Country

United States

Project authors

Josh Ren

Project Name

ENVELOPE

Country

Russian Federation

Project authors

Artem Alendeev
Kristina Ukhina

Shortlisted projects

VIEWclose Shortlisted projects

United States

Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)

+72 points Buildner University Rankings!
josh ren

United States

akkarawin valinluck
pimchid chariyacharoen

Slovakia

Technical University of Košice

+176 points Buildner University Rankings!
matej gurka
karol gregor
andrea bočková

Poland

University of Fine Arts in Poznań (Uniwersytet Artystyczny im. Magdaleny Abakanowicz w Poznaniu)

+22 points Buildner University Rankings!
aleksandra bieszka
dominik buchting

United States

feifei feng
michelle boyde
ye wang

Italy

marco sorrentino
leone spita
chiara mobius
jacopo mannello

Poland

Wroclaw University of Science and Technology (Politechnika Wrocławska)

+22 points Buildner University Rankings!
michał grądowy

Poland

Poznan University of Technology , Politechnika Poznańska

+72 points Buildner University Rankings!
michalina linkowska
zuzanna zdanowicz
joanna spychała

China

Tsinghua University

+22 points Buildner University Rankings!
shenglan xu
jiaqi li

Russian Federation

Yaroslavl State Technical University

+22 points Buildner University Rankings!
svetlana zyubina

France

Lobjoy delcroix

jeremy delcroix

Denmark

gustav kragh-jacobsen
erlend lindstad

Denmark

amalie holm pedersen
alberte hyttel reddersen

Canada

Toronto Metropolitan University - TMU

+22 points Buildner University Rankings!
muhammad alam
raymin sidhar
carl xavier jules caliva
morgan staples

Russian Federation

artem alendeev
kristina ukhina

Poland

sebastian krawczyk
szymon chrzanowski

Australia

alexander lockhart
shun yuguchi
geoff goerling

United Kingdom

diem nguyen
sebastian hicks
tul srisompun
phan do

Germany

Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences (Hochschule Darmstadt)

+72 points Buildner University Rankings!
martynas degutis

Poland

marzena stasik
janusz ziobrowski

Mexico

Faculty of Architecture (Facultad de Arquitectura UNAM)

+22 points Buildner University Rankings!
demián flores
max colorado
fernando gutiérrez
mikhail ortiz

Thailand

thanatorn namsrithan
sirut reinhard huehne
pitiwat thitiyaphat

United States

jake heffington
emily fiedler

United Kingdom

harry jia
kelvin zhang
peter song
lyric barnik

United States

mengru wang
rachel reinhard

Ukraine

Odessa State Academy of Civil Engineering and Architecture

+72 points Buildner University Rankings!
zhenya zhenev
 

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