El Temple De La Sagrada Família / Arup & Hanson / Barcelona

El Temple De La Sagrada Familia

Architect: Antoni Gaudi
Architect of Record: Jordi Fauli
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Client: La Sagrada Familia Foundation
Structure Type: Tower
Building Function: Religious
Structural Material: Composite
Area: 38,000 m2 up to now
Construction started: 1882
Estimated completion: 2026
Construction cost: € 3.000.000 per year
Contractor: Sagrada Familia Construction Board
Material: H-Blanc
Engineering: Buxade, Margarit i Ferrando, slp

Courtesy of Sagrada Familia Foundation

Construction of the Holy Family

The Sagrada Familia is the monumental symbol of Barcelona. The temple was started in 1882 and from 1883 the architect, Antoni Gaudi, was in charge of its project and construction until his death in 1926.

Courtesy of ARUP

This work is built with donations and is expected to be completed by 2026.

The current construction follows the original idea of Gaudi. It is an architecture with balanced and authoritative structures. Currently the structure of the temple is recalculated by computer programs in 3 dimensions.

Courtesy of 2BMFG Arquitectes

La Sagrada Familia is a church with 5 naves with a transept of 3 that form a Latin cross. The 6 towers above the transept and the apse remain to be built.

White concrete from the central (own or external), prefabricated elements on site and other prefabricated externally is used. White Concrete from Hanson Hispania has been appointed for many years as the project's reference concrete when major volumes are required. The white concrete is produced with white cement, non-coloured additives, and limestone from Hanson Hispania's quarries. In order to guarantee top product quality and avoid any change of colour, the mixer trucks have to be cleaned thoroughly before transporting white concrete. The concrete is fast hardening, with a 7-day compressive strength of 45 MPa.

Courtesy of 2BMFG Arquitectes

Taking on the towers

Antoni Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia church, is finally due for completion in 2026, one hundred years after his death. Gaudi's expressive and flowing vision has been an adventure in structural design and construction technology ever since he started work on the project in 1883.

Courtesy of Heidelberg Cement Group

In 2014, with the building 60% complete, the Sagrada Familia Foundation approached Arup to help with the remaining structural design, particularly how to produce the remaining six towers, dedicated to the Four Evangelists, The Mother of God (Mare de Deu) and Jesus Christ.

Courtesy of ARUP

Project Summary:

6 towers designed in prestressed stone.
172.5m will be the height of the central Jesus Tower when complete.
40% of the project will be completed between 2016 and 2026.

Pure Masonry

The team were aware that towers built in traditional masonry or earthquake resistant reinforced concrete (with stone cladding) would make the towers too heavy for the foundations and crypt below. Instead we developed a scheme using the stone itself as structure, producing a beautiful finish as reducing the weight of the tower by a factor of two. This approach also reduced built cost and accelerated the construction programme.

Courtesy of Heidelberg Cement Group

"The work of the Arup team has allowed to built the central towers with the innovative technique of prestressed stone. We value their rigour and the research for the most effective, clear and simple solutions."

Jordi Fauli

Architectural Director, Sagrada Familia Foundation.

Courtesy of Heidelberg Cement Group

The resulting design used pre-stressed stone masonry panels as the primary structural element. Pre-stressing provides greater strength to the panels, allowing them to be accurately fabricated remotely, transported to site and easily assembled on site by crane. This solution also allows the panels to resist stresses imposed by wind and earthquakes.

Courtesy of ARUP

Arup modelled each and every component in 3D to a construction level of detail (including nuts, bar threads, couplers, fillets and chamfers). Carefully designed connections ensure that when panels are craned into place, they fit together like Lego blocks, without further adjustment.

Courtesy of ARUP

The pre-stressed stone panel method echoes the pure masonry construction used in the earlier construction of Sagrada, while the more modern off-site manufacture approach guarantees consistently high quality. Installing a 5m tall by 4m wide panel now take 30 minutes, saving time and enabling a safer construction process - important as the basilica will remain open during the final years of the build.

Human, Digital, Physical

In all of the work on the Sagrada Familia, Arup have used a new generation of digital tools to produce workable structural designs. This parametric approach combines deep human knowledge of the structural variables in the Towers form and position, with powerful algorithmic tools that could model the hundreds of subtle variations of geometries for the design. This human-plus-digital ethos was the best way to make Gaudi's design pragmatic to construct in a realistic time-frame, and would have been unrealistically laborious to carry out cutting without cutting-edge technology.

Courtesy of ARUP

Arup experienced working alongside 2BMFG Architects and the Sagrada Familia Foundation has demonstrated how the near-limitless capacity of digital tools, used creatively by human beings with their experience and insight, can solve almost any engineering challenges - even on projects as singular as Gaudi's church. Design of the towers is now complete and construction of the tower dedicated to The Mother of God has reached the ninth level by February 2017.

Courtesy of Heidelberg Cement Group

Digital model is then used to automatically cut the individual blocks of stone that are accurately fabricated into a panel using lase cut plywood templates; pre-stressed with machined stainless steel bars; and assembled on site.

Watch the video below from the La Sagrada Familia Foundation to discover more about the central towers are being raised:

Courtesy of Basilica de la Sagrada Familia

Arup is now helping the Sagrada Familia team with the design of nucleus, stair and lift within the Jesus Christ tower, the roof for the Nave and the pinnacles that will complete the tops of the towers for this breath-taking church.