IN FOCUS / POTAIN
BRINGING A VISION TO LIFE Potain cranes help realise Gaudi’s130 year old vision with the imminent completion of Barcelona’s Basilica Sagrada Familia. ONE OF EUROPE’S MOST FAMOUS construction sites, Barcelona’s Basilica Sagrada Familia, is the focus of unprecedented construction activity in a bid to complete the vision of the original architect, Antoni Gaudi. More than 130 years after the first stone was laid, the end is within sight for Barcelona’s Basilica Sagrada Familia. Thanks to an influx of funding, striking innovations, old fashioned craftsmanship and four Potain tower cranes, the famously unfinished church is now on schedule to be completed in 2026. This coincides with the 100th anniversary of the death of its architect, Antoni Gaudi. Millions of travellers visit Barcelona each year and this has meant salvation for the Sagrada Familia foundation. The church currently sees roughly four million
tourists a year, each paying an entry fee ranging from $24 to $64, meaning the foundation, which is overseeing the basilica, has enough money to finish the main nave, a soaring expanse of treelike pillars and multicoloured stainedglass. The nave was consecrated by Pope Benedict in 2010. Today, more than two dozen architects are working on the project - most of them local Catalans - and 200 workers in total are involved in the construction. A construction site as unique and monumental as the Basilica of the Sagrada Família requires a carefully selected range of cranes to help complete the construction process. Potain tower cranes have been on site since 1998, and before that the only crane on the job site was a Richier crane, part of
Construction of the unfinished church is now on schedule to be completed in 2026, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the death of its architect, Antoni Gaudi
38 / CAL November 2019
the Potain Group through the BoileauPotain-Richier (BPR) brand. This crane had been on site since the late 60’s. Currently, there are four Potain cranes operating on the construction site: MD 175B – MD 238 – MD 125B and the MD 560 B. The construction site team call the MD 560 B the ‘Mother of All Cranes’ because it feeds work to the other cranes. The cranes only play a part in accelerating the construction process; changes to the way key components are manufactured is also key. As the know-how and financing fell into place, the Sagrada Familia foundation began to study what it would take to actually finish the church. Enter British structural engineer Tristram Carfrae, the deputy chairman of Arup, the design and engineering firm that built the Sydney Opera House. He found himself walking out of a meeting in 2014 with the foundation thinking, “Did that really happen? Do we really have the opportunity to work on the most fantastic project in the world?” The challenge was how to speed up the rate of construction by a factor of 10 and complete the project by 2026. Part of the answer lies at Galera, a sprawling work site 90 minutes north of Barcelona. Here a small crane is used to slide multi kilo ‘anchor blocks’ onto an interlocking row of granite stones that will be fixed to a steel plate and bound together into panels. Because the anchor has holes through which steel rods will be inserted, there is a tiny margin for error. The panels are Arup’s solution to the complex problem of building the Sagrada Familia’s towers. To make them light enough, the engineers could have built a steel frame and clad its surface with stone. “That didn’t fit with our notion of quality – from the inside it would have looked like a Hollywood set,” says www.cranesandlifting.com.au
