now
The things that make architecture tick: events, competitions and selected new developments from the world of daylighting.
Pixels in the church vaults
Photo: Gerhard Richter, Cologne / Archives of the Cologne Cathedral, Matz and Schenk
Cologne cathedral, the third largest gothic place of worship in the world, has been enriched by a new work of art that has fuelled controversies and provoked contradictions. In the middle of August, the 106 m2 south transept window by Gerhard Richter was inaugurated. Richter, who also lives in Cologne, is considered to be one of the most expensive living painters in the world and was the only one whom the cathedral chapter thought was capable of giving an appropriate, contemporary expression to one of the largest windows in Germany’s largest cathedral. The principals had relatively fixed ideas about the imagery that was to be used in the commission; it should show six German martyrs of the 20th century. However, the painter, who was born in 1932, surprisingly came up with a completely independent design of his own – an abstract pixel pattern of 11,263 coloured squares in 72 colours. Richter’s painting ‘4096 colours’ from 1974 provided the basis of the design, the coloured panels of which were filled out at the time by the painter purely at random. However, the new window is not entirely the result of chance; Richter manually reworked the colour distribution for the tracery disks divided into small sections, in order to obtain a harmonious general impression. He preferentially used darker colours as the transept window faces directly south and is at no time during the day in the shade of abutments or other buildings. In contrast to historical church windows, the individual squares are not separated by leaded dividing bars. Instead they are connected to a carrier pane and to each other by a non-hardening silicone gel. In this way, the glazing has a filigree appearance and even high temperature differences will not result in the panes cracking.
4
D&A Winter 2008 Issue 07