The mausoleum is conceived by the architects of Lehrer Architects + Arquitectura y Diseño as a vertical topographic landscape that complements the city and plays with the flat surroundings through an innovative approach that aims to save the scarce remaining space and that, from a succession of open spaces bathed in natural light and with numerous balconies overlooking the city, focus the visual frame of visitors through the open corridors on the ocean, the San Gabriel Mountains or Hollywood itself.
Made from concrete, with a view to accommodating heavy elements in it, the tall and relatively narrow building, the project includes a series of crypts formed by vertical concrete slabs as well as enormous volumes that loom over the street, a concatenation of corridors with chiaroscuros that evoke the amazement of the ruins that dot the collective memory and a columnar made of granite blocks that mark the roof and the information center, inspired by great palaces and monuments.
Hollywood Forever Cementery by Lehrer Architects + Arquitectura y Diseño. Photograph by Tim Griffith.
Project description by Lehrer Architects + Arquitectura y Diseño
Los Angeles’ iconic Hollywood Forever Cemetery has unveiled the first phase of its new vertical mausoleum, one that will eventually provide eternal housing for over 50,000 deceased Angelenos. Designed by award-winning, Los Angeles-based firm Lehrer Architects LA, led by AIA Los Angeles Gold Medalist, Michael B. Lehrer, FAIA and completed by Roberto Sheinberg’s Arquitectura y Diseño, this monumental addition will extend the life of the Cemetery another 50 years by ultimately adding 22,500 new crypt spaces, along with 30,000 niches for ashes, in a building that both enhances and celebrates the cemetery’s iconic cultural presence in the city. Gower Mausoleum is a towering 100-foot-tall concrete monument featuring open breezeways and a stepped-garden streetfront completing the historic Cemetery’s north half of a full city block with Paramount Studios to the South. On axis with the Hollywood sign, it will serve as a cultural and spiritual landmark that honors the dead, their visitors, the living and the entire community of Hollywood as a public space filled with light, fresh air and panoramic vistas of the City and beyond.
The Hollywood Forever Cemetery, a 53-acre historic landmark in Los Angeles, was originally designed by noted landscape architect Joseph Earnshaw (1831-1906) and opened to the public in 1899 as the Hollywood Cemetery. Emblematic of early 19th century lawn cemetery planning, the site eliminated fencing and barriers, favoring open views, bucolic landscapes, and curving pathways intended for strolling and contemplation—a design ethos that has made it a cultural mainstay in the city. Brought back from the brink in 1998 by the current owners, Hollywood Forever Cemetery is the final resting place of legends like Rudolph Valentino, Cecil B. DeMille and Judy Garland, to more contemporary icons like Johnny Ramone and Chris Cornell. The Cemetery was restored and revived, creating more affordable burial options for the surrounding community, bringing services into the modern age with digital films of remembrance and transforming the cemetery into a cultural hub with outdoor film screenings, cultural events at the Masonic Lodge, large scale concerts on the Fairbanks Lawn and the legendary annual Día de los Muertos celebration with over 35,000 attendees.
Hollywood Forever approached the Lehrer Architects LA team to expand the cemetery so it could continue to serve current and future generations of Angelenos. For over 3 decades the firm’s work has been rooted in the community, providing shelter and housing for the city’s residents, making them natural partners to bring this iconic LA landmark into the next generation. Roberto Sheinberg worked with Michael B. Lehrer for 10 years at Lehrer Architects LA. With Lehrer as Design Principal-in-Charge and Sheinberg as Director of Design, they teamed closely to design the Mausoleum as built. Sheinberg's firm AyD founded in 2021 has since seen the project through construction as well as detailing the design and drawings for the remaining phases.
The mausoleum is conceived as a vertical topographical landscape both complementing and riffing on the surrounding cemetery’s flat, park-like setting. It demonstrates an innovative approach from the architects to save the remaining scarce ground-floor real estate in an industry that traditionally requires much surface area on - and six feet under - ground level. Given that people often stop visiting the deceased within a few years of their passing, the team felt it was imperative to make it a destination of desire for Angelenos and a place to which generations would return. Design for the mausoleum began in 2013 with the team drawing on far-reaching influences from the seriality of Pop Artists like Donald Judd, Carl Andre, and Andy Warhol's stacked Brillo Pads, to Eduardo Chillida’s stark and bold solid/void sculptures to the ziggurats and mastaba from Mexico and Ancient Persia.
The street-facing exterior of the poured-in-place concrete building displays decorative geometric patterns that give texture to the imposing volumes and contrast with the smooth quartzite stones that front the crypts, alternating between void and solid on each floor to create a layer of visual texture. The chiaroscuro of huge volumes shaping deep shadowed open corridors evokes the awe of massive ruins that dot our collective memory. Crypt-fronts are finished with a variety of different quartzites from Brazil, selected to work harmoniously as a whole whilst providing location identity and wayfinding to the different corridors. Custom dimensional granite blocks were created for the rooftop Columbarium and the Information Center. With virtually no enclosed spaces, the building is open and drenched in fresh air and natural light, with a profound openness to the elements that facilitates passive ventilation and natural breeze. Contemplative balconies looking out onto the City, inspired by the miradors and belvederes of great palaces and monuments, allowing for moments of pause and awe for visitors along with a rooftop garden and promenade with 360-degree views. The architects focused the visual framing through the open corridors, creating specific contained views of the Cemetery Park-like grounds, City, trees, the studioscape at Paramount, the Hollywood Hills, the Pacific Ocean, the San Gabriel Mountains, Downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood itself.
Structurally the building is tall, relatively narrow and extraordinarily heavy as it is built with solid concrete to accommodate weighty coffins, stacking them eight to a floor with each floor soaring 20 feet high. Each crypt is formed with 3-inch vertical and horizontal slabs of concrete creating a structural “honeycomb” through the whole building. Huge cantilevered volumes hover over Gower St, creating a memorable urban boulevard contiguous to the soundstage elevations of Paramount Studios, radically transforming an average LA street into a place of consequence. In order to maintain the extreme openness of the design, the cantilevers required significant engineering smarts. Brandow and Johnston, the Structural Engineers on the project, were the fifth engineers to work on it and the only ones who were able execute without compromising the original design.
“This project is about HOME. It is about community and the places which shelter the body and nurture the soul. It is a place of memory and prophecy. Sharing a city block with Paramount Studios and watched over by the mountaintop Hollywood Sign just north, Hollywood Forever Cemetery is a profoundly Hollywood place that is at once ephemeral and enduring. This fully exterior place of literal and figurative gravitas--chronically drenched with fresh, sublime Pacific breezes and endless, expansive views--achieves a verdant lightness of being by being doused in a reverie daylight and its deep shadows. It is the full process of life, death and renewal rising proud in the center of Hollywood.”
Michael B. Lehrer, FAIA, Founder & Principal of Lehrer Architects LA.
“Our experience with dense urban projects, combined with a deep understanding of housing principles and the importance of open, park-like spaces, shaped our process and approach from the very beginning by creating a rhythm of dense concrete towers for interments, thoughtfully balanced with open, expansive spaces that celebrate both life and our city.”
Roberto Sheinberg, AIA, Founder & Principal of Arquitectura y Diseño.
Fulfilling the architects’ vision of the building as a topographical landscape, award-winning landscape architecture firm Studio-MLA’s design builds from ground-level gardens to intimate, vertical terraces, culminating in a rooftop garden with expansive city views. Each landscape layer is woven into the architecture’s geometry, grounding the structure in the natural environment, and enhancing visitors’ experiences. Visitors entering the ground-level are greeted by calming water walls and a curated selection of lush, evergreen trees, shrubs, and grasses. At the upper levels, a series of terraces flank the mausoleum’s corridors, offering moments of respite amid mid-level planted niches. Vibrant Bougainvillea blooms, low carpets of Rosemary, and the iconic form of Italian Cypresses create a backdrop that accentuates the architecture’s façade, evoking a layered, ethereal experience and creating a stepped garden that is visible from the street and the city beyond, growing up the length of the building and breaking out towards the sky. Over time, these tall, geometric concrete volumes will be covered by vines becoming city-scaled, multi-story topiary hedges. The rooftop garden brings in earth-toned materials that harmonize with the surrounding landscape, with four Blue Palms and an allée of mature Olive Trees. The powerful silhouette of the building and its planting builds on the exuberant silhouette of Hollywood Forever landscape and the juxtaposition of concrete and nature is visually and conceptually representative of the city itself.
“We aimed to create spaces that draw visitors into quiet reflection, connecting them with nature—a reminder of the enduring and the ephemeral.The walls remind us that water holds a particular resonance here in Los Angeles, and around the world, as a vital force that invites contemplation.”
Studio-MLA president Mia Lehrer.
Phase 1 of 5000 crypts and 8000 niches was completed over 4.5 years and is now being populated. Phase 2 will begin construction in Spring 2025, adding a further 6500 crypts and close to 10,000 niches, with Phase 3 following with 10,000 more crypts and 12,000 niches to complete the 400 ft long and 160,000 square foot structure.
