St. Katharina von Siena
Cologne's most recently built Catholic church (as of 2020), its two thick concrete shells forming a body that resembles a ship's hull.
The church belongs to a parish center in Blumenberg, one of Cologne's newest districts, and is structurally interwoven with its layout.
Source: Wikipedia
At a Glance
- Type
- Catholic subsidiary church
- Location
- Blumenberg district, Cologne
- Construction
- 2001 to 2003
- Architects
- Heinz Bienefeld (design), Nikolaus Bienefeld (further planning)
- Consecration
- 14 December 2003 by Cardinal Joachim Meisner
- Patron saint
- Catherine of Siena
- Award
- Recognition at the 2006 Cologne Architecture Prize
History
For Blumenberg, the mother parish of St. Marien in Fühlingen planned a subsidiary church as part of a parish center including a kindergarten, parish office, parish hall, and staff and rental apartments. The design emerged from a 1992 architecture competition and was created by Heinz Bienefeld, who died in 1995, after which planning stalled. His son Nikolaus Bienefeld carried the project forward, and the foundation stone was laid in December 2001.
Architecture
The church forms an elongated body, slightly bulging on one side, made of two wall shells each 1.20 meters thick, evoking a ship's hull. It pushes into parts of the parish center and, in places, merges with them. While the rest of the center is built of brick, the church stands out through pale concrete streaked with natural tones, its natural stones chiseled to bring out their colors more clearly. A separate bell tower with a square base is, like the parish center, built of brick and rests at an angle on four round columns. Small concrete trapezoids, made using the same technique as the church façade, create a visual link to the church building.
Interior
The entrances are located on the narrow sides, leading via stairs about one and a half meters below street level into the church interior. This is arranged transversely to the inner wall shell, so the congregation gathers in an elongated arc around the altar; behind it, a semicircular niche (exedra) marks the altar area. Above the altar and congregation, a square light shaft with a flat pyramidal roof opens upward. The wall shells remain almost entirely closed, with two exceptions: a square window beside the altar, framed within the wall's depth by a sevenfold stepped reveal, and a window above the entrance to the confessional at the rear wall. At the east entrance, stairs lead down to a crypt supported by four columns, its dimensions extending slightly beyond the church's floor plan; it also serves as the baptismal site.
Furnishings
The two windows — a Trinity window with an abstracted Eye of God and a window on the theme of sin and redemption — were designed by Dieter Hartmann in an abstract composition. Nikolaus Bienefeld designed the altar, ambo, and tabernacle, the latter surrounded by a mesh of reinforcing bar mats that references the building material. A statue of Catherine of Siena at the west entrance was created by Elisabeth Perger of Kerpen. The two-manual organ with 14 stops was built by Josef Weimbs in 2004. The tower holds a bell cast in 2003 by the Petit & Edelbrock foundry in Gescher, tuned to the pitch B.
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Auto-generated, last verified: 2026-08-30
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