A+Awards: the next project in our collaboration with Architizer is a tinted concrete and steel crematorium in Holsbeek, Belgium, which was named as one of the winners in the religious buildings and memorials category at the 2016 A+Awards (+ slideshow).

Ghent-based Coussée & Goris Architecten teamed up with Spanish firm RCR Arquitectes to win a competition for the design of Crematorium Hofheide.
The crematorium is built on a landscaped site within one of the large plains in the Flanders region of Belgium. The architects described the location as a "gentle swampy basin".

"This basin is the setting for the crematorium, underscoring it and propitiating the permanent formation of a larger reservoir, part of a walk through the park that spreads across the entire precinct, at the ends of which are two cemeteries (one for burials, the other for niches)," said the architects.
Related story: Katrina Spade's Urban Death Project proposes a composting facility for dead bodies

The long, rectangular structure is primarily built from concrete, which was tinted to match the colour of an iron-rich stone that is common to the area.

Strips of weathering steel in irregular widths create a screen that covers the upper two thirds of the external walls. Some of the steel lengths are gently twisted to create a textured pattern around the building.
It sits within a shallow trough just below ground level, almost surrounded by a large pond.

The architects sa...