The new church of Gödöllő rises above Gödöllő with its unique octagonal towers

In May 2024, handed over, and in October, the St. Augustine Provost Church of the Premonstratensian Abbey in Gödöllő was consecrated during a three-day series of celebrations.

The 100-year plan of the Premontrian Order of Premonstratensian Abbey in Gödöllő, which celebrates its 900th anniversary in 2021, has been realised with the construction of a new church. It is a further testimony to the Church's millennia of stability and is a constituent part of the church.

The general construction of the 62-metre-long, 31-metre-wide church with a capacity of 700 seats was carried out by Fejér-B.Á.L. Zrt., and our newspaper reported on the work in a detailed article. The project, which took two and a half years to complete, was of particular importance to the company, as the project manager told our newspaper, „we are not building a church for 50 years, but for centuries”.  

The main information was summarized by Bela Astalos, project manager, Vilmos Bernwallner, project director and László Zobay Nagy (Arche-Accord Kft.), and we present the facility, its construction, its beauties and difficulties in this article.  

During the construction, the contractor's team faced many challenges, some of which were planned and foreseeable, others unexpected. A lot of coordination and thought was required to schedule the reinforcement, shuttering and concreting of the main and cross arches, the complexity of the reinforced concrete, masonry structures and insulation, the coordination of the construction in space and time, and the Russian-Ukrainian war and the epidemic situation, which also threatened the supply of materials (reinforcing steel) and the provision of manpower.

The plans are based on the Premontrian tradition

The 1949 m² cross-vaulted, twin-towered church will have an altar in the central axis and two side chapels to help with spiritual life. The main nave with its hipped transept is flanked by two side aisles, a chancel and a transept; while the exterior is dominated by two front towers, a hipped tower and a separate baptistery chapel.

The designer drew up a plan for a three-nave, transept church in the architectural tradition of the Premonstratensian order. The structure and interior design of the building is reminiscent of the medieval Gothic rib-arched vaults, so that the originality of the building was already evident in the structural design. The contractor had to pay great attention to the coordination of the masonry and reinforced concrete work when building the reinforced concrete pillar frame and the façade wall structure. The external masonry was built as planned using homogeneous ceramic masonry units, and the wall thickness was such that no façade insulation could be used.

The external wall structure of the reinforced concrete pillar frame building was therefore built with 44 cm and 30 cm thick POROTHERM masonry units, stacked in bond, with a total thickness of 75 cm. The structural elements of the pillar frame were constructed using core insulation, so that the 30 cm ceramic masonry could be laid along the outer face of the wall structure, thus ensuring a continuous homogeneous facade plane.

The unique curved reinforced concrete supporting structure of the church was a huge challenge

The pillars, beams and arched reinforced concrete structures could only be built as on-site reinforced concrete structures in the traditional way. The possibility of prefabrication had been considered, but the design of the connections and the permanent, inconspicuous disappearance of the node locations made this impossible. Particular care and coordination was required to ensure that the construction of the thick brickwork and the reinforced concrete structure was coordinated in time and space, as the technological processes were interdependent and the structures had to be built in parallel. In order to rationalise the construction time, it was necessary to produce individual slab formwork for the curved reinforced concrete structures. The construction of the individual arched and curved structures was a major challenge for the formwork erectors," says the project manager of Fejér-B.Á.L. Zrt..

During the construction work, a solution had to be found to build and then move the scaffolding to the correct height, following the construction sequence.

In addition to its traditional structural solutions, the church's materials are also reminiscent of bygone times. This can be seen in the plinth, the window frames and sills, and the façade of the tower. These façade elements are made of blocks of sandstone from Vác, using traditional stone carving techniques. The laying of the stones required a great deal of attention and skill, which had to be coordinated with the complex structural and roofing work. The prefabrication of the stone elements started almost as soon as the project began, so that they could be in place in good time.

<It was not feasible to mass-produce so many stones, as the quantity of valuable stones available in the quarry, their colour and their location of use had to be taken into account. After careful selection, the elements were made in the stonemason's workshop and placed on site at the time of installation.

The contractor used the traditional construction sequence. For the ground works, the basement section under the two towers and the basement section under the basement of the church were built separately, but above ground level, construction could be continued as a whole and in sections.

The timing was determined by the technological times: for example, during the time of formwork and ironwork, it was possible to carry out masonry or insulation work in other areas. At the same time, the towers, nave and sanctuary areas were treated as separate units during construction. The difficulty was that it was not possible to increase the number of individual prefabricated shuttering units, partly because of the cost and partly to ensure that the structural elements were completely uniform. Once a given element was completed, only the next element could be started.

The foundation stones had to be placed in their final position

The church was built in a single construction phase. Work started in November 2021 with the foundation of the lower church sections and continued with the construction of the lower church building sections. The seven foundation stones of the church were laid at this time. The interesting thing was that the foundation stones were already in their final position and level and could not be moved during the construction.

Octagonal towers rising to the sky

Work above the surface continued first with the construction of the reinforced concrete structures of the two western towers. 

The intermediate section of the towers required a great deal of attention and geometric skill to form, as the square structure at the bottom becomes octagonal from a height of 20 metres, with a 5 metre long transition. While the towers were being built, the walls and the curved reinforced concrete beams of the church rose steadily behind them.

The tower was lifted into place in a finished state

Carpentry work began on the nave's ascending structure. It was important to build the towers as soon as possible, so the carpenters started work on the tower tops.

A special feature of the process was that the carpentry and tin-work for the two tower towers were completely completed on site, and then the 10-metre high helmets were lifted by a steel frame hoist - first onto the slab of the spire, which had been completed in the meantime, and then from there onto the reinforced concrete support structure of the towers, which were built 30 metres above the ground. The two-metre-high gilded crosses were then placed on top of the helmets in a sacred ceremony after the crosses had been consecrated.

While the ascending structures of the transepts and the sanctuary were still under construction, the carpenters were also working on the nave and the side aisles. The roof structure was completed in parallel with and in parallel to the reinforced concrete and masonry work, starting from the towers and extending to the apse of the sanctuary (the sanctuary is usually semicircular in its end - ed.). The challenge for this part of the building, as for the towers, was the geometrical laws of the octagonal shape.