Guildford Crematorium, Modern Godalming Building, Haverstock Architects Surrey Design
Guildford Crematorium, Godalming, Surrey, UK
23 June 2022
RIBA Awards 2022 Winning Buildings and Architects
This Godalming building is one of the 29 winners of the 2022 RIBA National Awards for architecture:
24 May 2022
Guildford Crematorium is 2022 RIBA Southeast Building of the Year
photo : Simon Kennedy
Guildford Crematorium – 2022 RIBA Southeast Award Winner
Guildford Crematorium by Haverstock has been announced as the 2022 Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Southeast Building of the Year.
The new-build crematorium in Godalming provides a chapel for 135 people seated and standing space for 50 along with floral tributes, to replace the existing building which was at the end of its natural life. The project involved creating a suitable replacement which respond to modern practices.
Previously on e-architect:
5 May 2022
This is one of seven projects that have been awarded Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Southeast Awards.
Guildford Crematorium, New Pond Road, Godalming GU7 3DB, Surrey, south east England, UK
Design: Haverstock, Architects
photo : Simon Kennedy
Guildford Crematorium, Godalming, Surrey, England, UK
Jury Report
Visitors to Haverstock’s Guildford Crematorium are first greeted from the car park by an unprepossessing brick and concrete wall. After this somewhat underwhelming start, the project simply gets better and better.
The new-build crematorium was designed in close collaboration with Guildford Borough Council and their design team, and the thoroughness of this process is evident in the way that the functions of the building have been carefully orchestrated to manage the journey of mourners and to ensure that the functional aspects of the site do not intrude on the experience of visitors.
But it is this secular project’s powerful abstraction of historic typologies that gives it such character. The car park wall culminates in a colonnaded gateway – and, once the visitor has crossed this threshold, the spaces of the complex open up into a world of colonnades and garden courts, all sitting beneath a strong horizontal roof datum. The datum gives a clear indication that we are at a place dominated by the crossing from one ‘world’ to another.
The walls and columns that rise up to meet this roof have a solemnity and seriousness: defining routes, bounding spaces and filtering views. In counterpoint to the seriousness of these elements is the beauty and delicacy of the excellent landscaping and planting – although this too acknowledges the nature of the site in the form of a long raised sculpted lawn – an abstracted version of what might be a long barrow – which accompanies visitors as they make the journey from the entrance and remembrance court towards the chapel.
As mourners approach the main chapel building, the great datum of the roof forms a sheltering canopy and frames a view into a garden court. Turning from here into the chapel, this datum is dramatically broken through by a dynamic geometric roof, with natural light pouring from above, filtered through the ribs of the timber structure. In its own abstracted way, this space has the communicative power of a Baroque frescoed church ceiling, mediating our understanding of life and death.
photograph : Simon Kennedy
Title: Guildford Crematorium
RIBA region: Southeast
Architect practice: Haverstock
Date of completion: March 2020
Date of occupation: March 2020
Client company name: Guildford Crematorium
Project city/town: Godalming, Guildford
Contract value: £10,000,000.00
Gross internal area: 748.00 m²
Net internal area: 702.00 m²
Cost per m²: £8,256.65 / m²
The total construction cost includes phasing works, temporary works and the new cremator.
Contractor company name: Buxton Building Contractors
Consultants
Structural Engineers: Elliott Wood Partnership
Environmental / M&E Engineers: RHB Partnership
Quantity Surveyor / Cost Consultant: Press & Starkey
Landscape Architects: Plincke
Acoustic Engineers: Cole Jarman
CDM Consultant: Goddard Consulting
photograph : Simon Kennedy
photograph : Simon Kennedy
Awards
• RIBA Regional Award
• Regional/RSAW Building of the Year
• Regional Award Short List
2022 RIBA Southeast Award Winners
2022 RIBA Southeast Award winners
Guildford Crematorium – 2022 RIBA Southeast Award winners images / information received 040522
Phone: 01483 444711
Location: Guildford Crematorium, New Pond Rd, Godalming GU7 3DB, Surrey Surrey, Southeast England, UK
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