This winning module design for a chapel of rest, as commissioned by the city of Frankfurt, uses light as a primary material, channelling its ethereal properties and its ability to evoke transcendence and the sublime. The scheme’s elemental form facilitates this dialogue: shorn of excess, adhering to golden section proportion and articulated in an ascetic palette of brick and translucent glass, the environment effortlessly generates a sense of serenity and reflectivity.

Each of these non-denominal chapels is carefully orientated so that southern daylight, via a vertical slot in the south facing elevation, gently guides the mourners into the building. Whilst seated indirect overhead light, filtered through the lantern like structure, softly illuminates the proceedings, the coffin and the chapel. Once the service has concluded the side doors are opened and the congregation follows the coffin back into the daylight.

Whilst each chapel adheres to a strict proportional system, there is flexibility in the design’s massing, allowing it to adapt to the scale of a specific cemetery, its architectonic presence remaining undiminished. Initially, four of these chapels will be built, eventually extending to all cemeteries throughout the municipality of Frankfurt.