Glass cover for the Busmann Chapel

Construction work is underway on the Busmann Chapel Memorial at Postplatz in Dresden. The glasfaktor engineering office carried out the dimensioning and technical planning, as well as acquiring permission from the building authorities for the fully glazed façade. The memorial, with a ground plan measuring 22 m x 12 m, will be in a roof structure made of wooden beams resting on four 13-metre-high steel supports. The four facades will be fully glazed, made up of 13-metre-high glass fins, to which the separate sheets of glass, measuring 3.0 m x 4.4 m, will be attached. As little metal as possible will be used to connect them, to make the structure as transparent as possible and allow an unrestricted view of the memorial interior. When planning and dimensioning the façade, one particular challenge was putting into practice the building authorities' safety requirements for the glass supports and the joins, some of which are held together with adhesives. The structure passed the inspection thanks to complex FEM calculations and trial components. The memorial to Dresden's Sophienkirche church, intended to recall the victims of the Second World War and the two dictatorships, has been in planning since 1995 and under construction since 2009. It is being constructed on the site where the Busmann Chapel once stood, a side chapel to the Sophienkirche built in about 1400.