The Ephemeral Cathedral of Créteil : a 350m2 lightweight gridshell structure made of 2 kilometers of GFRP tubes

Lionel Du Peloux (1, 2) , Frédéric Tayeb (2) , Jean-François Caron (2) , Olivier Baverel (2)

1 T/E/S/S - T/E/S/S atelier d'ingénierie
2 navier umr 8205 - Laboratoire Navier

The Ephemeral Cathedral of Créteil (Paris, France) is a gridshell structure made of composite materials. Built in 2013, this religious edifice of 350m 2 is a temporary church meant to gather the parishioners during the two-years renovation of their permanent cathedral. This large-scale prototype (Figure 1) represents a first in the building industry, which still shows excessive apprehension for the use of non-traditional materials such as composites, especially when it comes to structural applications. Based on a previous successful experience [1] the gridshell was prefabricated and erected by the parishioners themselves [2].

Mots clés: GFRP; glass fibre reinforced polymer; gridshell; connection; active bending; shell; formfinding

Domaines: Génie civil; Matériaux composites et construction; Structures

Lionel Du Peloux, Frédéric Tayeb, Jean-François Caron, Olivier Baverel. The Ephemeral Cathedral of Créteil : a 350m2 lightweight gridshell structure made of 2 kilometers of GFRP tubes. CIGOS 2015: "Innovations in Construction", CIGOS, May 2015, Cachan, France. ⟨hal-01199044⟩