Who designed the pixel-like stained-glass window installed in Cologne Cathedral in 2007?

Gerhard Richter designed Cologne Cathedral’s pixel-like stained-glass window installed in 2007.

The window occupies the cathedral’s south transept and consists of 11,263 small squares of colored glass. Richter based the arrangement on a computer-generated pattern, but he selected the colors from a palette associated with his earlier abstract paintings. The result is a modern geometric composition inside one of Europe’s most important Gothic churches.

Unlike traditional figurative windows, Richter’s work does not tell a biblical story through recognizable characters. Sunlight instead creates a shifting field of color across the interior, linking contemporary abstraction with the older cathedral tradition of using light symbolically.

The commission was controversial because some people expected a more explicitly religious design. Richter’s window is therefore often discussed as an example of modern art entering a historic sacred building.