ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: Burials of the dead are the necessity of each society through their development. Culture aspects changed the way of burials and dictate the appearance and disappearance of each typological type of funeral architecture. The development of these types or transformations of current realizations of unused types, their current use and future routing need to be specified, clarified and compared with experiences in other European states. This article focuses on a new building type of the 20th Century-crematorium. The development of these buildings was not continuous in all European countries, and it did not take place in the same time period; the most recent development has affected the current situation most. Through comparing, it is possible to find missing ties that have influenced the future of building types of this specific architecture. In the next phase, it is necessary to focus on the regional differences, approaches and facts, as well as to trace the consequences of the ongoing secularization of society
1 INTRODUCTION
As we have written in previous articles, with reference to the work of Markéta Svobodová (Svobodová, 2013), it is possible to divide crematoriums into three epochs of development. The first epoch characterizes crematoriums realized during the interwar period. It was the time of the First republic, the time full of enthusiasm for building a new democratic state, the time of new hope and, finally, its own laws. Mostly old ones from the days of the Austro Hungarian Empire were used, because of instantaneous national division. However, in case the former empire was not reluctant to consider, new laws were adopted. An example of this is the Law Lex Kvapil with two paragraphs, which allowed cremation. The second important thing for development of crematoriums is the process of secularization, which was started as a result of events of the First World War. “It (War) means a fundamental conceptual background-and not just because of the break-up of old Austria. It meant primarily a departure from the old world symbolized by the Christian religion. This departure had two results: People stopped believing in God…people stopped believing in Man…as an image of God, the Man who is a pinnacle of creation or autotelic guarantor of values.” (Klaus, 2014)
The second period of the crematorium development can be seen after the Second World War, more after the Second Vatican Council, it means from the 60’s of the 20th Century till 1989. The third period progressed during the 90’s of the 20th Century. The fourth period in the Czech Republic so far has not occurred. It can be characterized by exhaustion, saturation, keeping of existing buildings, transformation of interwar realization into contemporary needs and conditions and maybe also waiting for the new future of this young building type.
