Extension catholic parish centre and renovation church Saint Francis
Bassersdorf, Switzerland
Competition study 1st prize 2012
Realisation 02.2015 - 12.2016
Parish
centre.
Overview
Client
Cath. Church Bassersdorf-Nürensdorf, Switzerland
Architecture
Vécsey Schmidt Architekten GmbH BSA SIA, Basel, Switzerland
Team ZPF
Enrico Cristini, Heike Egli-Erhart, Antje Käser Wassmer, Luis Looser, Helmuth Pauli, Jacqueline Pauli, Alexandra Schmid, Flamin Tröster
Publications
In 1972, the Bassersdorf-Nürensdorf parish decided to build a temporary so-called “Catholic-Lenten-Fund church” in Bassersdorf, a structure made of prefabricated concrete elements. The ground-breaking ceremony was held on the 19th of April 1973. The church was consecrated only about eight months later and dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi (on the 15th of December 1973). The property's farmhouse was renovated in 1978, so that it could be used as the clergy house. In 1983, the parish vicariate became the independent Saint Francis parish, Bassersdorf-Nürensdorf. Due to a lack of space, the Saint Francis Centre was added in 1988 as an extension, which was used for church-related and secular events. In 1994, the approximately 180-year-old clergy house's roof framework was in danger of collapsing, so it was renovated.
After a study contract was carried out in 2015 and 2016, the community centre was given an extension in the form of a building to accommodate a clergy house, classrooms, a youth room and a guest flat. The “provisional church”, originally intended as a makeshift solution, was renovated; now, with fixtures removed and a refurbished gable wall, it shines in new splendour. The different buildings are now visually linked as an ensemble by a kind of cloister around a courtyard with cherry trees and a fountain.
The extension's support structure consists of a skeleton construction with flat slabs, which rest on columns in the facade and load-bearing walls in the interior. Walls of in-situ concrete provide horizontal reinforcement. For roof drainage, the slab above the upper floor is concreted with a slope, for which purpose, this slab's thickness varies between 20 and 35 cm. The sanitary pipes are installed within the other slabs, which are 25 cm thick.
The surrounding self-supporting concrete facade is separated from the slabs by a thermal insulation layer and, at regular intervals, anchored to the ends of the slabs from behind. In order to avoid making the rooms smaller unnecessarily and to reduce the amount of material required, the solid facade is not a traditional double-skin structure. The inner skin is replaced by columns, which are accommodated within the insulation layer and cannot be seen from the interior. The columns (mostly hollow steel sections measuring 80 x 80 mm with a wall thickness of 8 mm) stand directly above the basement floors' walls.
The cloister is a purely visual link between the old and new buildings – these cannot be structurally interconnected because of differences in deformation and subsidence behaviour. The cloister and columns are also made of in-situ concrete; drainage is channelled into the interior courtyard via the inner edge.