A funeral chapel in Cluj-Napoca’s Central Cemetery (Házsongárd) has received the Architecture MasterPrize 2026 in the Architectural Design – Other Architecture category. The announcement is dated 20 October, carried on 21 October by G4Media from Cluj24. This is an architecture prize, not an inauguration held today: the building already stands in the Lutheran section of the cemetery.

The project is by TEKTUM Arhitectură & Artă. Gábor Tóthfalusi is the lead architect, with István Levente Szőcs. The client is the Evangelical Church. The chapel serves funeral rites, houses the Házsongárd Association and has a columbarium in the basement.

The work started from the former guard’s house, a late-nineteenth-century building that had fallen into disrepair. The classicist façade was kept at the request of the Zonal Monuments Commission. Bricks recovered from the demolished part were reused in the vault. The extension, the architects write, is shaped like a stone with slanted faces, close to the surrounding tombs rather than a volume that would cover them.

The east–west orientation and the windows high in the tower let light fall on the coffin during a service. That is the project description, not a service held on 20 October. Red brick, exposed concrete, oak and corten steel complete the palette; a granite courtyard can open into the interior through a heavy metal door.

The architecture magazine Octogon confirmed the same prize on the same day, 20 October, also in the Other Architecture category. Tóthfalusi says the new building sits as a monolithic block in the cemetery’s fabric without competing with it. That is the architect’s statement, not the jury’s verdict.

Until another distinction or a public opening, the closed fact is the prize announcement: the Lutheran chapel at Házsongárd, already built, has taken the Architecture MasterPrize 2026 in Other Architecture. It is not a chapel inaugurated today.

Image: Leontin l, Central Hajongard Cemetery, Cluj-Napoca, 23 March 2018, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons; the 2018 cemetery, not a photograph of the awarded chapel on 20 October 2026.

Sources consulted: A chapel in Cluj Central Cemetery wins an international architecture prize - G4Media / Cluj24; A chapel in Cluj Central Cemetery wins an international architecture prize - Cluj24.