Lilleøya is a 60 000 m2 cemetery park with only shared graves, the first of its kind in Norway. It has approximately 13,000 graves, divided into coffins and urns.

The area was Oslo Airport’s backyard for more than 40 years. The plot today is a frequently used outdoors area that borders a nature reserve, a boat marina and a seaplane harbor. The consideration of the site’s qualities has given great challenges, but also a constructive friction in the project. It inspired to find an alternative design and organization of the cemetery’s elements and transitions with its surroundings.

The new cemetery is a contemplative place that plays on the topographic qualities of the site and its rich nature. Nature is faith-neutral and, as a material, provides large cyclical variations throughout the day and the seasons. At Lilleøya we find a variety of qualities: calcareous pine forest, wetland with bird sanctuary, meadows, calcareous hayfield, and a protected oak. All planted vegetation, grass, meadows, perennials and trees, are of local origin.

The terrain, the vegetation and the organization give the movement through the cemetery a number of large and small sequences of experiences.

Other material use and design are kept subdued, but powerful. Covers are laid with gravel and concrete, and constructions are made of corten steel, concrete and rough wood. A longitudinal wall separates the cemetery from the marina and leads us from the access in the north-east, past the isthmus between the fjord wedges with the circular tree plantings, to the forest in the south-west. The pattern in the wall is a meander table, an infinity motif that can be interpreted as a journey, a lifeline and a life, and is the result of a collaboration with the artist Edith Lundebrekke. The wall anchors the cemetery in the terrain and directs attention to the calm natural landscape.

Project Data

Project management, landscape architecture, architecture: PIR2

The project is a collaboration between PIR2 Oslo AS and Agraff AS

Website: https://pir2.no/prosjekter/lilleoya-gravlund

Other designers involved in the design of landscape:

Artist: Edith Lundebrekke.
Engineering: COWI AS
Builder: Agaia AS

Project location: Tornsangerveien 31, 1360 Bærum, Norway.

Design year: 2016-2021

Year Built: 2021

Photographer: Hanne Jonassen, Jostein Thorvaldsen, Agaia