Students Teun Verberne and Jordy Kern, and assistant professor ir. Arno Pronk of Structural Design will be leading the project. Verberne: “This design is a lot more challenging. You can’t just inflate a balloon with a rope net, and spray it with fiber-reinforced ice like last year. This time, we want to test if cloth and nets inside the ice are a proper reinforcement. Not a lot of research has been conducted into that.”

Pronk previously stated they’ll be dealing with a dynamic load, with a lot of wind influences. The structural engineers want to build a tower that’s forty meters high, thirty meters long, and twenty meters wide. The building location is very close to their sleeping accommodation, and the testing equipment is closer as well. Another thing that’s different from last year: apart from students of Construction Engineering, the project group now consists of students of Construction technology and Construction as well.

Verberne expects a total of some forty TU/e people to travel to Finland for the project. Right now, the fifteen students of the project group are making structural calculations, and finding sponsors. The actual construction of the Gaudí tower is planned for the period December 28 – January 17. The team hopes to finish the church two days early.