26. September 2024
The topic of craftsmanship will also be the focus of the 2024 Cathedral Master Builders’ Conference. Here Felix Stitz, stonemason at Linz’s St. Mary’s Cathedral, at work in the cathedral workshop. © Photo: Diocese of Linz
The Cathedral Master Builders’ Conference of the European Association of Cathedral Builders, Minsters and Steelworks Masters will take place in Linz until Saturday, September 28, 2024, with around 120 participants from all over Europe.
Under the title “Crafts, Digitalization and Mediation”, the Bishop Rudigier Foundation is inviting people to this conference this year to mark the 100th anniversary of the consecration of Austria’s largest church. The conference serves as an annual exchange of knowledge and experience among cathedral master craftsmen and cathedral architects. The cathedral architects’ conference is taking place in Austria for the third time – after 1976 and 1997 in Vienna – and for the first time in Linz.
The focus of the cathedral master builder conference is the topic of digitization. “We see this not only as a tool for conservation measures, but as an opportunity to present the cathedral in all its diversity and to make it accessible to a broader public in a new way,” says Dipl.-Ing. Michael Hager, cathedral master builder of St. Mary’s Cathedral. For the first time, the conference will show virtual tours in a high-resolution point cloud of the cathedral in the Ars Electronica Center’s Deep Space. Photogrammetric images of the high altar, the art treasure and gigapixel images of the painted windows enable an unprecedented level of detail.
The topic of craftsmanship will also be the focus of the conference. Gerhard Fraundorfer, cathedral smelter at St. Mary’s Cathedral, will present the cathedral’s stones and the places where they were mined to his European colleagues. The new cathedral center, which was only completed in April and represents a link between the city and the church, will also be presented at the conference as a space in the spirit of a culture of welcome and communication.
The European Association of Cathedral Builders, Minsters and Ironworks Masters was founded in Cologne in 1998 and has developed from the informal cooperation of Central European cathedral builders’ workshops since 1975. There are currently around 150 members from 17 European nations who come together to exchange ideas, learn from each other and maintain existing connections. The content of the annual cathedral builders’ conferences is the professional exchange at the planning, monument conservation and craft level and the discussion of conservation measures for the various buildings. Current restoration measures, technological innovations and material issues are discussed, research results are presented and the respective building of the host is presented. The topics include, for example, the conservation of stone, wood, metal, glass and clay bricks, but also monitoring and documentation technologies.
Another topic that takes up a lot of space is fire protection in large churches. The association also deals with European legislation that could affect the activities of its members. Most recently, this was the case with new regulations on the use of lead, which is important for roofing and glazing in church buildings and for organ building, for example.
