Enfield Mausoleum Extension – Greenway Architects – Australia

Architects: Greenway Architects
Location: Enfield Memorial Park, Adelaide, Australia
Project Team leader: Jon Lowe 
Project Manager: DTEI
Structural Engineer: Jim Wilson
Services Engineer: Gascoigne Consultants
Landscape Architect: Oxigen
Builder: Coombs and Barei
Size (m2): 2000 m²
Photographer: Aldo Trissi

Forming part of an ongoing master plan for the redevelopment and extension of a significant cemetery, a new precinct was created within the Enfield Memorial Park Cemetery, housing a new Mausoleum. A series of carefully and rigorously detailed and intimate courtyard spaces surround two new external structures providing spaces for 184 premium crypts, connected by a new linear axis boulevard running from an existing building previously created as part of the original master plan. A bold, folded and cantilevered roof form sits atop a heavy granite clad base of each of the new structures, with a soft sculptural pattern formed with negative joints that diminishes to a fine edge at the roof’s extents. The new roof forms provide shade and shelter from the weather without detracting from the monumentality of the crypts and their pattern of vigil lights and vases, allowing also for a column free ceremony space in the space between and around the structures. Solid black walls at the ends of the ‘tandem’ crypts are left blank for the addition of future relief artwork yet to be commissioned.

A serene reflection pond, detailed flush with the adjacent pavements, is located in what will become the center of the main courtyard in the future expansion of the site. Bands of honed and sandblasted  pavements align with the joints and corners of the granite crypts. Formal landscaping is carefully placed to define and reinforce the structure of the new courtyards and highlight the solemn yet celebratory nature of the site. A new Entry Pavilion provides a formal and structured gateway entry and exit point for the Mausoleum. This will help to define the Mausoleum precinct, with its own design and detailing language, further reinforcing its sense of place and arrival.

Materials include local sandstone on the walls facing the old Mausoleum Building, internationally-sourced granite and black ceramic tiles to the crypts, and a grid of honed and sandblasted concrete pavements and washed-aggregate concrete slabs.