Securing St John's Church in Bergen
Our Norwegian customer Bergen Stillas has taken on one of its biggest projects to date - the St John's Church, which is crumbling and suffering from fallout. The church is the third tallest building in Bergen, reaching 61 metres above the ground, but its age and height are not the only things that make it unique. It also has a rather peculiar shape. Bergen Stillas' current focus has been to secure the church with customised scaffolding.
Landmark with a peculiar shape
Bergen Stillas have been taking on one of their biggest projects to this day – the St. John’s Church in Bergen in Norway, locally known as Johanneskirken. The church was drawn by the architect Herman Major Backer in neo-Gothic style and was finished in 1894. Today it represents one of Bergen's most famous landmarks looking out over the Norwegian west coast town.
The church is the third-highest building in Bergen, reaching 61 meters above the ground. But the age and height aren’t the only thing unique about it – it also has a rather peculiar shape. The pillars of the church make the geometry shaped almost like a pyramid, wider at the bottom with a decreasing width as you reach the clock tower. Fredrik Larsen at Bergen Stillas comments on the challenging project.
– To build adapted scaffolds we had to make a 3D drawing and concept for the scaffolding based on blueprints, ultimately consisting of many smaller parts for just the right fit. The unique shape of the church and the height presented some challenges on the way, and as you can imagine, it was very important to get it right from the start.
Securing the building with scaffolding
The current focus for Bergen Stillas has been to secure the church since it suffers from fall-out from the aging building. The St John's Church has had deferred maintenance for many years, but the damage has also been accelerated by the climate in Bergen, which has a thaw and freeze cycle in a single day. The stone saturates with water and when it freezes, it cracks.
So, the first step is to take safety seriously and secure the building with scaffolding. The church will be open as usual to the public, and with the visitors in mind, the entrance area has been wrapped and secured on all sides.
Later, when funding is in place, a complete renovation of the interior and exterior is planned. However, it may take 3-5 years before this happens. Then Bergen Stillas will need to build the scaffolding even higher.
Fredrik Larsen is proud that the company got the prestigious project and concludes that the key to finding the right solution has been the help from HAKI.