Detail of the project ed. 2020

LAT­TKE ARCHITEK­TEN – APOS­TELIN JUNIA CHURCH

Design­er	Frank Lat­tke
Loca­tion	Siegfried-Aufhäuser-Straße 25, 86157 Augsburg
Design Team	Lat­tke Architek­ten, Augsburg
Year	2012
Pho­to credits	Fotograf Eck­hart Matthäus, Wertingen

Pho­to external

Project descrip­tion

The area called Sheri­dan Park is a new 70 hectare dis­trict that was cre­at­ed on the site of a for­mer bar­racks. Res­i­den­tial, com­mer­cial and open spaces find each oth­er in a new urban plan­ning order. The old stock of trees, wide green park­ing areas, some build­ings like the for­mer offi­cers’ mess and the Grasiger Weg as an east-west con­nec­tion are build­ing blocks of an ear­li­er time. The new build­ing of the Old Catholic Church Augs­burg with sacred space, com­mu­ni­ty hall, parish office and three apart­ments is delib­er­ate­ly placed in the mid­dle of the Sheri­dan Park, at the inter­sec­tion of the Grasiger Weg, the park and the res­i­den­tial areas. The wall fac­ing Grasiger Weg forms the spa­tial sup­port of the church square, which opens to the wide park to the south. Church, parish and res­i­den­tial areas are arranged in two com­pact struc­tures to each oth­er. On the ground floor of the main build­ing is the com­mu­ni­ty hall, on the upper floor above it the sacred space — so the con­gre­ga­tion stands with feet on the ground and looks with the heart skyward.
The church room is a bright wood­en room with a floor area of 13 by 16 meters. Four walls span the sim­ple, nine-metre high church room, the black, pol­ished screed and the hor­i­zon­tal pine mould­ing of the walls cre­ate a calm atmos­phere. The roof con­struc­tion, sim­i­lar to a shed roof, with four glazed truss­es and con­vex­ly curved, white-glazed roof sur­faces directs day­light from above in a mod­u­lat­ing man­ner into the church room, which can accom­mo­date up to 80 peo­ple. As a meet­ing room, the main room forms a cen­tre with­out exces­sive hier­ar­chies. Nei­ther win­dows nor wall dec­o­ra­tions dis­turb the concentration.
The build­ings were con­struct­ed in low ener­gy stan­dard in mod­ern wood pan­el con­struc­tion. The build­ing enve­lope and roof are high­ly ther­mal­ly insu­lat­ed. Vis­i­ble board stacked ceil­ings in the res­i­den­tial build­ing and a con­crete ceil­ing between Parish hall and church room increase the stor­age mass of the build­ing. The con­struc­tion method com­bines sta­bil­i­ty of val­ue, Ecol­o­gy and mate­ri­al­i­ty. Cloth­ing made of ver­ti­cal planed board form­work in larch soon becomes a fine one, sil­ver-grey nat­ur­al pati­na. The main build­ing mate­r­i­al is wood, over 260 cubic meters were installed. This rep­re­sents an active con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate pro­tec­tion because this build­ing will hold a CO2 vol­ume for a long time of approx­i­mate­ly 260 tons is stored.
The Cam­panile of the Apos­tle Junia Church in Augs­burg — the Cam­panile (derived from cam­pana ital. for bell) is a free­stand­ing bell tow­er, which from an urban plan­ning point of view rep­re­sents the
Posi­tion of the Apos­tle Junia Church at the inter­sec­tion of Sheri­dan Park and Grasiger Weg marked as a built sign vis­i­ble from afar and the sig­nif­i­cance of the place ampli­fied. The slen­der struc­ture occu­pies the south­east cor­ner of the church square and cre­ates a spa­tial­ly excit­ing Effect oppo­site the one who steps back behind the wall res­i­den­tial build­ing, the church with its covered
entrance and the expanse of the sur­round­ing land­scape park. The 18 m high tow­er tow­ers above the church build­ing by a good 20 feet. The ground plan of the Cam­panile fol­lows the dimen­sion of the Bells and their swing lengths. The four-part Ring­ing is over almost sev­en meters in the upper part of the Tow­er in a row. The small­est bell with 57 cen­time­tres diam­e­ter hangs at the top of the tow­er fol­lowed by the oth­er three bells. The largest of the four bells mea­sures 88 cen­time­tres in diam­e­ter and weighs 420 kilo­grams. With a lit­tle dis­tance to the walls, the bell needs Approx­i­mate­ly 2.50 meters of move­ment space.
The pitch of the ring­ing was adjust­ed to the loca­tion and the exist­ing church­es. The sound open­ings were cho­sen with care, tak­ing into account the audi­bil­i­ty on the church square and in the near­by res­i­den­tial build­ings. The slits at the height of the bells mea­sure 3 by 15 cen­time­tres and face south and north into the park. Sim­i­lar to the sound holes of a vio­lin, these nar­row open­ings are com­plete­ly suf­fi­cient for the opti­mal sound prop­a­ga­tion. Both the tow­er and the church are built entire­ly of wood. The 16-cen­­time­ter thick walls are made of cross lam­i­nat­ed tim­ber. These are sol­id wood pan­els, as wide and as long as the tow­er, made of spruce boards glued cross­wise. The boards were deliv­ered by the man­u­fac­tur­er to the work­shop of the tim­ber con­struc­tion com­pa­ny Gumpp & Maier in Bin­swan­gen. There the actu­al con­struc­tion work took place. The four pan­els were screwed togeth­er with the roof cov­er and some plat­forms while lying down. The bells came togeth­er with the yokes made of oak wood from the Bachert com­pa­ny. In Bin­swan­gen they were hung into the tow­er before the fourth wall was closed. The assem­bly of the bells, the dri­ve tech­nol­o­gy and the cabling in the lying down posi­tion made the work much eas­i­er, as bells are nor­mal­ly installed in the tow­er on site. Final­ly, even the cladding of planed boards was applied to the out­side. So the tow­er was ready to travel.
With its 18 metres in length and 3 metres in height, the struc­ture was trans­port­ed from Bin­swan­gen to Augs­burg while lying down and then hoist­ed onto the pre­pared foun­da­tions on site. First the wood­en con­struc­tion was lift­ed hor­i­zon­tal­ly from the truck with two cranes and then turned in the air. This bal­let num­ber was very sen­si­tive­ly con­trolled by the crane oper­a­tors, who placed the 20 tons of weight on the foun­da­tion plate on only one hook and thread­ed it into pre­pared 24 mil­lime­tre thick thread­ed rods. These were used for non-pos­i­­tive attach­ment in order to safe­ly trans­fer the loads from the chimes and the struc­ture into the ground. The trans­port was announced in the ear­ly morn­ing hours on the traf­fic radio and by mid­day the tow­er was already firm­ly anchored at its des­ti­na­tion. The Cam­panile is now vis­i­ble from afar and the sound­ing became the land­mark of the Apos­tle Junia Church, he makes them out­ward­ly rec­og­niz­able to what it is, a church in the mid­dle of the park.

Illus­tra­tive project report
Down­load report

Pho­to internal

Tech­ni­cal drawings

BACK TO PROJECTS PAGE