Large Church design

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the firm I work at does a lot of Religous design work. This current job I am posting is a phase 2 master planning and design for a project we designed and had completed 2 or so years ago (phase 1). I am teaming up on this job with two other architects in the office, though I have had the opportunity, to this point, of running with the master plan and design thus far.

The church is an evangelical type of church which has their services broadcasted on TV. They are a very fast growing church, currently in a 3000 seat worship space. Since the church has moved there worship services to this new facility they have almost doubled in size. they ran a full-house on their first Sunday and have been doing two services since, and are now at full capacity for both of those services. So, needless to say this is a very energetic and fast-paced church.

The church is very contemporary in its approach to worship as they have lots of music, drama, and very high-tech sound and video.

the charge for the phase 2 design is to plan for getting the rest of the church to this facility; as they are currently having their administration and youth still meeting at their old facility.

The Program: Two youth theaters, to seat 500 - Administration, 21,000 Square feet - A gymnasium with running track and full-service lockerroom/showers, workout rooms, etc. - a chapel to seat about 500 - additional education meeting rooms, 15,000 Square feet - and expansion of sanctuary to seat a total of 5,000 w/ expanded preschool space below.

the Scope: the program brings a total scope of work to just over 300,000 Square feet of space. Our charge at this point is to master plan for the program and begin to find out some initial costs of the buildings so the church can decide on what they want to build first (it is possible they could build it all at once).

Design approach: The church wants modern/contemporary. More glass and "cutting-edge" design. After we built their initial building, the feeling was we were too conservative with the design. So, we are looking to give them a more modern design.

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Here is an aerial shot of the existing church.

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Google Earth snapshot of the church and its current loayout on the site.

The church is in a subburban area and just off a major interstate highway. It is accessible via a 4 lane state highway.

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here is a rendering of the original Master plan. As you could tell from the GE image above we developed the site with further phasing to be placed adjacent to the original design. So this is a given as we have a "pad" already preped for future development.

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These next few images are of the preliminary layouts of the design. This is for the lower level which will house primarily education space. Yellow is existing everything else is part of the phase 2 master plan.

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Plan level 200 (main level)

There are givens already that I have to work with. One of those givens is a geometrical approach to the plan and how it will relate to the existing building. The design calls for a "fan" shaped worship center with has lended itself to axises that lead to a center point and "bands" of concentric circles radiating out from that center.

As of right now there isn't a real "concept" idea driving the design (though one could develop). As we are currently in a master planning/program stage, and trying t grasp the size and scope of the work, we are initially dealing with setting up an ordering system to help guide us in this design.

what we have done is use the idea of the concentric circles to help create a series of masses that give immediate relationships to the existing building. Then we have an axis that is drawn from the churches "point of center" and created a main corridor that would help organize and tie the new building to the existing one. By doing this we can create a large pathway that will act as the main place or orientation in the space, also creating a second ordering system of a standard 10' X 10' grid.

We also have 3 large volumes that will contain spaces that are roughly the same size in program. These would be the two theaters and gymnasium.

Hopefully you can see what I am talking about in this level 200 plan.

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And... the level 300 plan... which basically will house the half of the administration space and give access to the upper level of the worship space, the gym running track, and theaters.

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This is a snapshot of the existing building...

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here is the same view but of the current massing study...

Notice the 3 volumes to the left and the concentric circles... the axis isn't accentuated as much here...

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A little lower down front the front... this is the view you have from the street... the church has quite the presence from the roadway... The tower element is the main entrance to the church and has a small prayer chapel on the upper level (a very nice and tall space)...