Highest point of glass palace at ‘Flora’ in Cologne
Tuesday 1 September 2020
On 27 August, the first large steel arch of the new tropical glasshouse for Flora und Botanischer Garten Köln was erected and secured under the watchful eye of the press and other guests. Smiemans Projecten thus reaches the highest point of this special glass construction for this well-known botanical garden "Flora" in the city of Cologne at an early stage.
The botanical glasshouse with an area of 3,000 m2 is built with 54 curved steel trusses and no less than 4,500 m2 of insulated special translucent glass. Due to the special design, this lightweight construction allows as much daylight as possible for the exotic plants in the glasshouse.
The show greenhouse, which consists of three arch constructions, has a U-shape with two different heights. In the highest arch of no less than 17 meters (comparable to a six-storey flat) there is room for a walkway from where visitors can admire all the special plants and flowers from a great height.
The 150-year-old cedar, around which the tropical greenhouse was built, tragically fell over a few weeks ago as a result of thunderstorms with strong wind and heavy rainfall.