It’s no surprise that music is central to the leadership and congregation at LifeAustin Church. Headed up by Pastor Randy Phillips, who makes up one third of the Dove Award-winning contemporary Christian band Phillips, Craig and Dean, the church’s campus is located in West Lake Hills, a southwestern district of Austin, Texas, which for the past several decades has dubbed itself the Live Music Capital of the World. This fall, LifeAustin is celebrating the opening of its new amphitheater, resting on the same site as the church’s main worship center. Featuring 1,000 covered seats and capacity for another 500 to sit comfortably on the lawn, as well as an outdoor concourse area for smaller gatherings, the amphitheater was designed to not only accommodate LifeAustin events but also welcome those hosted by community organizations.
"They’re there to serve church members, but they’re also there to serve the community. It becomes a way of bringing people onto their property."
—STEPHEN PICKARD, Principal, Good Fulton & Farrell (GFF) Architects, Dallas, TX.
Stephen Pickard, principal at Good Fulton and Farrell (GFF) Architects, the Dallas, Texas-based firm that designed the facility, relays that originally, the amphitheater was to be built in phases, with Phase I consisting of the main seating area and the stage house, and audience members would be invited to bring their own lawn chairs. “It was pretty complicated in terms of how we would actually execute that plan,” he admits. Aside from leaving a few minor elements for later construction, the church, recognizing the complexity of a phased construction model, decided to build the facility all at once. Even in the initial phased construction plan, covered seating was mandatory: Austin can get very hot, and the church’s leadership was insistent on providing some shade. But it’s not always 100% shady under the covering—the sun moves after all, and will seep in depending on its angle and the time of day.
Sound Control Measures
Because LifeAustin’s campus is adjacent to a residential neighborhood, a big issue with the project related to sound. While the City of Austin’s noise ordinances may be less restrictive than those elsewhere, the church’s neighbors were concerned about how much noise an outdoor music venue would generate. LifeAustin worked with both the neighborhood groups and the city to ensure that the church was following noise ordinances. GFF, working in conjunction with the Dallas-based theatre, acoustical, and audiovisual design firm Idibri, developed a solution whereby the sound levels within the amphitheater and at the property line are monitored; basically, if the sound exceeds a certain level, an alert is sent to the engineers at front-of-house.
The stage itself is also oriented so that it isn’t facing any residential areas head-on, and “the amphitheater is positioned on the site such that the direction where most of the sound will be traveling goes back toward the church’s own property,” explains Ben Boeshans, CTS-D at Idibri. The firm also provided a number of other specifications to isolate sound: the facility’s side walls extend up higher than normal to help block sound that would otherwise spill out toward the neighbors, and a number of treatments were applied to absorb sound. “We put an extensive amount of acoustic treatment both in the stage house—on the walls and the ceiling—and out in the seating, and there are panels on the roof of the shed as well, just to deaden the sound.” Boeshans adds that this enables high impact sound in the amphitheater itself without unreasonable spillover. “It was all about containing it while not ruining the experience.” A d&b audiotechnik V-Series loudspeaker system also helps to keep sound where it should be.
Ultimate Efficiency, Environmentalism
Instead of incurring the costs associated with building and operating a kitchen, LifeAustin opted to install the utilities necessary to accommodate food trucks, “which is probably more appropriate for the kinds of events [they will be holding],” Pickard says. “It gives them the opportunity to have a variety of menus depending on the event, and it was a lot less expensive.” It also features the added benefit of supporting local restaurant businesses, notes another member of the design team.
Pickard relates that the siting of the building produced several challenges related to environmental preservation (the church and the design team wanted to remove as few trees as possible); the routing of utilities (the rocky ground underneath the facility made digging difficult); and drainage. “First of all, we had to understand how the water drained naturally—we couldn’t put an amphitheater there, and then have all the water draining into it, in front of the stage,” he explains. Drains behind the covered seating area are designed to capture some of the water flow, and the site’s grading is constructed to divert it. Additionally, there is a pipe running along the front of the stage that, once again, prevents the amphitheater from flooding. “It was a combination of redesigning how water would be routed, and then [providing] collection points where we could collect water and then redistribute it.”
AVL System Design
In addition to acoustics and theatrical consulting, Idibri was charged with designing the audio, video, and lighting systems for the amphitheater. Boeshans describes the audio system as “rider-friendly.”
“For touring productions that are coming through, the gear that’s there is the gear that a lot of tours want to see right now,” he says. And while the video and lighting systems are more modest than the audio rig, the company ensured that the facility is equipped with the infrastructure that can support any additional technology that is brought in. “The lighting and the video systems have lots of patch points, and are very expandable,” says David Stephens, senior consultant at Idibri. Right now, the church moves the LED display from its worship center to the amphitheater when needed. As for lighting, “a lot of it was making sure that groups can come in and rig their lighting system if they are traveling with one.” If they aren’t, the amphitheater is fitted with a basic lighting package that can be expanded if necessary. “There’s power on stage for additional dimming or power distribution if they need to hang more lights, or put more video screens up, and there are a lot of interconnect points for control,” Stephens adds. A catwalk is installed at front-of-house to facilitate load-in/load-out and maintenance, and Idibri designed an elevated follow spot platform at the rear of the facility in the interest of maintaining sightlines for those seated on the grass. (The roof design itself encompasses a minimal number of columns for this reason, as well.) Steel infrastructure across the back of the roof provides several hang points for video boards, if event hosts wish to provide video IMAG support to audience members seated on the lawn.
An Amenity-rich Experience
LifeAustin’s campus features a Frisbee golf course, a dog park, and walking trails, and Pickard notes that amenities like these are becoming prevalent among churches that place an emphasis on community outreach.
“As an architect that specializes in churches, one of the things that we try to accomplish in our work is looking for ways that churches can become an extension of the communities that they serve,” he says. “They’re there to serve church members, but they’re also there to serve the community. It becomes a way of bringing people onto their property.
