Woodland Chapel – Skogskyrkogården
"In 1915, Erik Gunnar Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz, now recognized as two of Sweden's leading twentieth-century architects, won a competition to expand the South Stockholm Cemetery. The commission would span their entire careers, reflecting stylistic developments and shifts over a twenty-five-year period.
Asplund's early sketch of the Woodland Chapel, which he was directly commissioned to design, reflects the influence of Swedish Romanticism. His proposal—"a synthesis of temple and hut," according to the architectural historian Caroline Constant—was directly inspired by a vernacular cottage in Liselund, Denmark, which he visited on his honeymoon in 1918. The chapel is set in a pine forest. A path leads through the wood to the entrance, where the dominant form is a steeply pitched shingle roof, a massive shape like a truncated pyramid supported by columns. The deep portico continues the darkness of the forest. Only when the doors to the chapel are open is the visitor presented with a light-filled interior."
Matilda McQuaid, ed., Envisioning Architecture: Drawings from The Museum of Modern Art, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2002, p. 47.
