It’s a busy Tuesday morning and Rick Ekhoff is discussing his philosophy on how design excellence applies to architecture. If a school building succeeds in inspiring students to learn, that’s design excellence.
“There is all kinds of abstract imagery throughout the building. Some of it we haven’t shared with the church..., because it is meant to be interpreted differently by each individual.”
—CRAIG AVERY, Civil Engineer, Church Elder, Southland Christian Church, Lexington, KY.
If corporate offices motivate their occupants and provide a more productive environment, that’s design excellence. But how does this work when a client asks you to design a church that doesn’t look like a traditional church?If your client’s goal is to build a facility that will attract people who haven’t considered going to church before, there’s potential for design excellence there, too.
Ekhoff, AIA, LEED AP, design principal at EOP Architects in Lexington, Ky., admits that when Southland Christian Church asked his firm to submit a design proposal for an adaptive reuse project that would eventually become its Richmond Road campus, he thought it was a long shot: EOP had never designed a church before. What’s more, the proposal that he and his team submitted went against the guidelines that the church had set out. In the end, this turned out to be precisely why Southland hired the firm (“You’ve got to be smart enough to know when somebody’s got a better idea than you do,” is how church elder Craig Avery puts it), giving birth to a collaboration that would not only make a powerful statement to the church’s congregation, but to the community of Lexington.“They wanted a building that reflected the personality of the church, but also spoke to the people who went by it so that those who weren’t familiar with the church itself would be drawn to it, and the building would play a role in that,” Ekhoff says.
Against the grain
In their initial conversations with EOP, Jim Cox, campus operations director at Southland, relates that “iconic” and “transparent” were two words that were used to describe the church’s goals for the building. “We felt that this was such a big deal, because we’re not trying to reach the churched; we’re trying to reach the unchurched,” he explains. The building needed to attract attention.
Both Southland and EOP knew that the project would pique interest in the community—if only because the existing building had been, if not a disaster zone, then at least an eyesore for over a decade. Originally a mid-sized shopping center housing the two-story department store Dillard’s, this adaptive reuse project would involve renovations spanning 84,000 square feet, as well as the construction of a 49,000-square-foot addition. Originally, the church leadership envisioned the old Dillard’s being transformed into a worship center, and this is where EOP went against Southland’s original Request for Proposal (RFP).
“We didn’t think that would be the best way to spend their money or to use the facilities that they had,” explains Richard Polk, AIA, LEED AP, project principal. Instead, EOP suggested that the existing building become the education center, and to build a new, attached, 49,000-square-foot structure to house the 2,800-seat worship center. If, as the initial RFP laid out, the worship center had been designated to the existing building, tearing out the column structures that were in the old store would have complicated the process and added a considerable amount to the budget. “We would have been building a brand new building inside the existing one anyway,” Polk notes.
Traditional religious imagery—a church steeple, a cross in front of the facility—were not to be part of the design; instead, EOP treated it in an abstract way. For Ekhoff, the sloped, slanted colonnade structure that supports a canopy outside the worship center (what those at EOP refer to as “The Forest for the Trees”) represents the crucifixion; angular wall planes signify mountains, and the recessed lighting niches up above the sanctuary’s stairwell represents the heavens. Draping the exterior windows of the education center is a sun screen that is LED-lit at night, symbolizing the stained glass windows you would see at a conventional church.“Like with anything abstract, people see things in different ways and they mean different things to different people,” Ekhoff says. “There is all kinds of abstract imagery throughout the building. Some of it we haven’t shared with the church and we never will, because it is meant to be interpreted differently by each individual.”
Interior transformation
Inside the church, the education and worship centers are united by Connection Point, a large, asymmetrical polygon that, once again in an abstract way, conjures up images of a boat. This is the heart of Southland, and serves as a welcome desk. A café and various more intimate gathering spaces spin off from this junction area between the old and new buildings, which EOP Interior Design Principal Chris Estes, CID, LEED AP, refers to as a sort of “Main Street.” “They challenged us to create this unified space because the social aspect (of church) is extremely important to what Southland wants to accomplish with this facility,” he explains.
Another challenge that EOP was asked to address had to do with light—especially in the old department store, which was essentially a dark, cavernous box. To brighten things up, EOP specified large windows for the south wall (the front of the building), as well as skylighting. “Now, even though you might be in the middle of this space—and quite a distance from the perimeter windows—you still see daylight down in the heart of the building,” Estes says. Avery, a civil engineer and one of Southland’s church elders who was heavily involved in the project, notes that the church’s goal to attract attention in the community has been met. “The parking lot is full of cars on Saturday evening or Sunday morning when we’re having services, and we’ve had people come in and say, ‘What’s going on here?’” he illustrates. “It’s been really cool to see that happen.”
Design & messaging intent
Southland is a particularly bold building, considering that Lexington’s roots lie in more traditional architecture. While Ekhoff isn’t a fan of the term “contemporary,” he does believe that architecture today needs to reflect its place in the timeline of aesthetics: a building that is designed today shouldn’t necessarily look like one that was designed 150 years ago. “As the design for Southland continued to develop, we knew it was going to be a controversial building, but it’s always been my belief that a little bit of controversy is a good thing,” Ekhoff says. The architecture of this church could not be status quo, he adds; otherwise, it wouldn’t deliver the message that Southland wanted to send, nor would it have responded to EOP’s philosophy of what design excellence is.A fine line to walk, Ekhoff concedes, since even though this is about architecture, it’s not all about the architects. “If we design a building that’s all about us and what we only believe, it’s going to fail,” he says. “Part of the success of us producing or creating great architecture is being aligned with great clients.” The architect has the responsibility to make sure that a client doesn’t go down the wrong path, he adds, and to temper the client’s goals and objectives with their professional experience and opinion. “It can’t be all about us; it has to be a shared collaboration.”
All images courtesy of phebus photography.
