After more than 130 years, a church tower in Ulm will lose its title as the tallest in the world to Barcelona’s Sagrada Família church – thanks to a company near Ulm that built a 10-metre-tall addition to the Spanish church.
The Ulm Münster, as the Lutheran church in southwestern Germany is known, has a tower 162 meters high, but the Barcelona church will make it 10 meters taller thanks to the addition of a walkable glass cross some 36 kilometers away is being built. of the Ulm Church.
“We take it with a certain wink and humor,” says Jürgen Wax, CEO of Josef Gartner GmbH, based in the Bavarian city of Gundelfingen an der Donau. No one from Ulm, he said, has complained about it yet.
Specialized construction company
The facade specialist in the city of 8,000 inhabitants is known for his contributions to special buildings such as the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg and Apple’s UFO-like headquarters in San Francisco.
The company, founded in 1868, employs approximately 850 people worldwide. Since 2001 it has been part of the Italian Permasteelisa Group. The church foundation in Barcelona awarded them the contract through a tender.
Assembly in early summer
The idea for the glass cross came from the Sagrada Família foundation. The company first built a prototype and is now producing six parts at the Gundelfingen factory that will form the cross.
The parts will be mounted on the tower in Barcelona early next summer. The Sagrada Família’s Jesus Christ Tower is expected to be officially completed before the 100th anniversary of the death of the church’s world-famous architect Antoni Gaudí in 2026. The cost of the glass addition is expected to be in the lower million range.
A walkable cross for eternity
Technically, Wax noted that the cross is unlike anything built before. “We have already built bridges and steel-glass roofs – but a walkable cross that is hollow and contains a spiral staircase – this has never been built in this form and is unlikely to be rebuilt any time soon,” he said.
Moreover, the meeting, at an altitude of about 150 meters, is expected to last about two months, from June to August, but Wax could not predict exactly when the Sagrada Família will surpass Ulm’s church.
