Grabmal F.C. Gundlach | Roland Poppensieker Architekt BDA

Grabmal F.C. Gundlach, image courtesy of Roland Poppensieker Architekt BDA

Grabmal F.C. Gundlach, image courtesy of Roland Poppensieker Architekt BDA

Grabmal F.C. Gundlach by German architect Roland Poppensieker is a minimal concrete box of a tomb for Hamburgian photographer and art collector F.C. Gundlach. The tomb is composed of four precast concrete elements of the size of 3 by 3 by 3 meter.

Dependent on the change of light and shadow and according to the time of day and the season, the reliefs of both photo and lettering are creating completely different impressions of the otherwise monolithic concrete corpus, which subject to the chosen angle is focusing varying apertures of the surroundings.

Roland Poppensieker

+ Project description courtesy of Roland Poppensieker Architekt

“An den Mausoleen” and close to a pond in the Ohlsdorf Cemetery in Hamburg, Germany, which is reputed to be the world’s greatest park cemetery, a tomb has been erected by order of the Hamburgian photographer and art collector F.C. Gundlach – in his lifetime – as his last house. It is a space enclosing sculptural object, referring both to historical sepultures and to modern artwork, melding the sarcophagus type, the stony coffin, with a baldachinlike protecting roof as it often occurs in sepulcher monuments.

Grabmal F.C. Gundlach, image courtesy of Roland Poppensieker Architekt BDA

The three by three by three meter sized object is composed of four precast concrete elements and – comparable to portal dolmen – joint together by separated parts insitu.

Shadow gaps emphasize even more this principle of joining. The “inner space” is accessible by a “caved” step. The materiality of the embracing walls and a change concerning acoustics are suggestive of a spheric change.

Grabmal F.C. Gundlach, image courtesy of Roland Poppensieker Architekt BDA

The materiality of the architectural concrete refers on the one hand to famous sepultures as Max Tauts Wissinger tomb (designed in 1923) in the Stahnsdorf Cemetery near Berlin. On the other hand, the concrete materiality allows to engrave via laser-assisted milling and formliner a relief into one of the tombs lateral surfaces, – the motive is a fashion photography in front of the Gizeh pyramids, taken by F.C. Gundlach in 1966. In so doing the tomb points to one of the most prominent grave monuments of the history.

Part of the tomb is also a tomb slab, which provides the lateral closure of the sarcophagus as well. Name and dates will be engraved later by deep sandblasting, bringing out the rough-textured grain of the concrete aggregate, a white norwegian marble. By multiple acidification the fine-textured grain is visible even now. With a certain exposure to light occurs an impression of depth in the surface as well as a natural luster.

Grabmal F.C. Gundlach, image courtesy of Roland Poppensieker Architekt BDA

Dependent on the change of light and shadow and according to the time of day and the season, the reliefs of both photo and lettering are creating completely different impressions of the otherwise monolithic concrete corpus, which subject to the chosen angle is focusing varying apertures of the surroundings.