Martín Lejarraga. Architecture Office

Mortuary in the field of Cartagena

MORTUARY IN THE FIELD OF CARTAGENA

Martín Lejarraga

Mortuary in the field of Cartagena
© David Frutos

BUILDER
Sanimar S.l.

CONST MANAGER
Marco Carselle

TECHNICAL ARCHITECT
Manuel Moreno

STRUCTURE
Idee. Eduardo Díez

CONSULTANT
José Aº Martínez

PHOTOGRAPHER
David Frutos

AREA
1047 m²

YEAR
2013

LOCATION
Palma De Mallorca, Spain

CATEGORY
Crematorium

Mortuary in the field of Cartagena
© David Frutos

Text description provided by architect.

The commission of the Mortuary project starts with the location and management of a plot to raise the building.

The property, an insurances company of local and regional scope, wanted to strengthen its customer base with this kind of facility in the area in which it concentrates his operations.

Mortuary in the field of Cartagena
© David Frutos
Mortuary in the field of Cartagena
© David Frutos

The North of Cartagena, between the towns of ‘La Palma’ and ‘Pozo Estrecho’, in the surroundings of the Field of Cartagena and the ‘Mar Menor’ sea.

That was how everything started and how I learned the first lesson of work: nobody wants a mortuary in their neighbourhood.

Mortuary in the field of Cartagena
© David Frutos
Mortuary in the field of Cartagena
© David Frutos
Mortuary in the field of Cartagena
© David Frutos

After many attempts to purchase available plots at different locations, in a drift that progressively leads us away from the nearest and accessible places, we just finished in the industrial park.

There, we selected an interesting plot: well proportioned and oriented, and strategically located, open to the general parking area and green zone of the industrial park, in which we could hardly distinguish small artificial stone benches and some scattered cypresses, that no one had noticed, but they add land value to us.

Mortuary in the field of Cartagena
© David Frutos
Mortuary in the field of Cartagena
© David Frutos
Mortuary in the field of Cartagena
© David Frutos

The second lesson was to identify and interpret the location codes, an industrial site made of constructions, that despite their different condition and activity scale-production, exhibition, storage, commercial, etc.-, had some common patterns that gave the whole a strange and complex discrete continuity.

We had the third lesson learned in advance, fit the budget to the limit of viability.

With this objective, we adjusted the building functional scheme to minimize it, with the consequent surfaces reduction and the achievement of an accurate and abstract construction.

Mortuary in the field of Cartagena
© David Frutos
Mortuary in the field of Cartagena
© David Frutos

Inside the building, the continuity provided by the white colour and natural light in its different orientations is qualified by the different size and proportion of successive spaces and textures of the materials that define them.

Designing and constructing all the furniture in the chapel, was more than a lesson a double challenge: to design, in addition to a bench, the set of pieces that form the symbolic and functional elements of the liturgy allows us to solve and connect all parts of the room.

How to recognize the building in the distance against a backdrop of exotic signs was the last lesson: we support the sign on the top of the facade and cut it out against the sky, no doubt this was the best way to distinguish it from a distant point. I bet Ed Ruscha himself would have liked it...


Mortuary in the field of Cartagena
Plan


Mortuary in the field of Cartagena
Elevation


Mortuary in the field of Cartagena
Section
Mortuary in the field of Cartagena
Section

Martín Lejarraga. Architecture Office
T +34 968 520637
Martín Lejarraga. Architecture Office
C. Muralla del Mar, 1, 30202 Cartagena, Murcia, Spain