Gellertkirche, Modern concrete church in Basel, Switzerland.
Gellertkirche is a modern church building in Basel with a nine-sided floor plan and copper roof. The 40-meter bell tower contains three bronze bells and forms a striking vertical element on the skyline.
Curt Peter Blumer won the architecture competition for the church, built in 1964 as the centre of the 1960s Gellertfeld housing development, a work of Basel's post-war modernism. The building is listed in Basel's inventory of protected buildings (Grossbasel-Ost, 1940–1970). A community hall was added in 2007 and 2008 for the growing congregation.
The name refers to the Gellertquartier, the district the church serves, not to a saint; the building is Reformed Protestant. The nine-sided central room, derived from a tipi, is used for worship and community gatherings, and the many side rooms on the ground and lower floors support parish life.
The free-standing campanile rises forty metres and stands apart from the church, so the entrance is found at the main building rather than the tower. The church lies in the Gellertquartier of the St. Alban district, at the centre of the Gellertfeld development. The building is listed in Basel's inventory of protected buildings (Grossbasel-Ost, 1940–1970).
An Italian chest organ built by Giovanni Pradella was installed in 2011 to complement the main organ. The principal instrument features 20 registers across two manuals and pedal for varied liturgical music.
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