The historic landmark of Columbia Cemetery, located in Boulder, CO, has come into disrepair in recent years. Since its establishment in 1870, hundreds of headstones have been damaged or vandalized. With a small team of students from CU Boulder, I designed and constructed a new structure to provide a storage and restoration facility for the active cemetery volunteers to repair the grave markers as well as the cemetery grounds.
Like a headstone, the building was designed as a marker and symbol of the culture, beliefs, and history of the cemetery.
Facing East toward the rising sun with the graves markers, the building presents a white polycarbonate screen that transmits sunlight to the interior and diffuses light to the exterior at night. The building extrudes west from the symbolic façade, creating modest northern and southern faces that do not detract from the focus of the cemetery.
A public cavity intersects the structure and allows visitors an escape from the elements. Clad in local beetle-kill lumber, the walls of the cavity also display a timeline, chronicling the history of the Boulder. Recycled concrete gravel and logs from recent forest fires define the exterior path and landscape surrounding the building. Corrugated CorTen steel offers a protective skin, which will continue to wear and age with the headstones it protects.
To complete the project on time and on budget, most aspects of the building were designed to be pre-fabricated at the studio. Hundreds of pieces of flat-pack, ¼” steel were plasma cut and sent to our facility, where they were welded into the connections for the structure. Simultaneously, 20-foot lengths of LSLs were cut and drilled to create the basic structural framework.
The skeleton of pre-fabricated units was then assembled on site in a matter of days. While the structure as a whole might be seen as reserved, the connection details between steel and wood create a minimal but striking visual.