Editor’s Note: AWCI received more nominations than ever before for its 2009 Excellence in Construction Quality Award program, but there can be only one winner. The winners were officially announced during AWCI’s 2009 annual convention and in this magazine’s May 2009 Industry Awards Issue, but we will continue to tell you about some of the outstanding runners-up.
The article that follows was a nomination submitted by Poellinger Inc. in La Crosse, Wis.
In 2001, a hilly, wooded tract of 70 acres was donated, and an additional 30 acres of adjacent land were purchased in 2005 for the purpose of building a shrine in La Crosse, Wis. Several small structures (visitors’ center, chapel, outdoor Stations of the Cross) and a meditation trail were constructed in 2006 and 2007. The Romanesque shrine church, the heart of the complex, was completed in 2008. The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which would draw people closer to God while respecting the environment and the site’s natural beauty, is said to be the first major Catholic church built in a classical manner in more than 50 years.
Poellinger Inc. competitively bid the project from conceptual drawings. Their responsibilities included providing the steel framing/suspended ceiling system engineering and installation and material selection, design and application of suitable substrates to receive plaster and plaster ornamentation, ecclesiastical painting (marble painted finish/gold leaf) and ecclesiastical art and elements.
Poellinger started their work on this high-dollar, low square-footage (less than 50,000 square feet) project in October 2005 and finished 26,000 man-hours (882 days) later, in March 2008.
Poellinger Inc. established partnerships with the designers and various manufacturers. Poellinger’s responsibilities included establishing the drawings and calculations needed to provide the steel stud framing and connections supporting the unusual ornamental shapes and finishes along the entablature and throughout the entire shrine interior. In addition to this, lower level ceilings had to be designed to be supported by sound isolators to prevent noise transfer to the chapel above.
Since the architectural drawings were highly detailed, with the mechanical systems part of the ornamentation, significant after-the-fact coordination of the finish assemblies and mechanical/electrical/plumbing systems and very unique, specialized steel framing was required in order to avoid interference or compromise of the supports. At certain points during the work, large-scale photographs were sent in and marked up with revised framing schematics, which could then be drawn up or sent out as field sketches. This amounted to a more humanized version of a building information modeling system.
The lower level sound isolators are spring-loaded devices located at roughly 4 feet on center in each direction and intended to support a secondary ceiling along with various MEP runs. These, in turn, were surrounded by additional gypsum board enclosures in many cases, making the supported weights vary widely. Identical springs deform varying amounts depending on the amount of force applied. This would be a problem if all the isolators were the same, so the task of calculating the different ceiling and enclosure loads for every location had to be undertaken. Poellinger Inc. gave the information to the isolator manufacturer so that different isolators could be customized and used at the different locations, allowing the ceiling to deflect somewhat uniformly and function properly.
The ceilings are complicated by the fact that they are suspended and highly detailed. The dome ceiling is 110 feet above the altar and 100 feet in circumference. It is suspended metal lath and gypsum plaster. In the nave of the church the ceilings are suspended barrel ceilings using a suspension grid system. The side aisles have suspended metal lath and gypsum plaster barrel ceilings. The sacristy has a suspended vaulted ceiling. Due to the weight of the ornamentation and the detailing of the large entablatures, the walls are structural steel framed with the necessary backing to receive the ornamentation.
All the wall surfaces were finished with a smooth putty coat plaster, requiring precise matching of contours before ornamentation could be applied. The plaster manufacturer was very responsive in providing pump-grade plaster that was pumped up to the 100-foot dome, quality substrate and specialty clips and accessories.
Of course, with all this work being done, it couldn’t hurt to have a little Divine Intervention. Here is an excerpt from the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s spring 2007 newsletter: “A work of this magnitude requires the collective expertise of a great number of architects, construction specialists and design consultants. We have been blessed to have truly the finest craftsmen associated with the building of this special church. Over the past months and continuing even now, work has focused on preparing the interior. This has meant installing metal framing and forming the curved areas of the ceiling, adding plaster to make the ceiling space ready for the painters, and installing the pediments and pilasters that give a sense of the sacred to the structure … Workers from Poellinger Inc. are forming the ceiling in the Transept area and applying [wallboard] in preparation for plastering. This work is at least 8 flights of scaffolding stairs up in the air. Please continue to pray for their safety.”
“Not only was the planning and structural design and manufacture exacting, but the requirement for ‘canvas-quality’ finishes, which receive light from many different sources and angles, was unusual and extremely challenging. I am very proud of our skilled craftsmen for their meticulous attention to detail and quality on this project,” states Mikel Poellinger, owner of Poellinger Inc. “One of my father’s first large jobs, 50 years ago, was the St. Joseph the Workman Cathedral, which was at the time one of the most elaborate and expensive buildings in our region. We were the only local contractor. Over the years, we have worked on many other churches, but none could compare in the grandeur and complexity of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We and our employees are proud of our long-standing reputation for quality, which earned us the opportunity to work on this unique and challenging project.”
