The Door Church, Tucson, AZ; images: SDG Architecture LLC
SDG Architecture LLC in Tucson, Arizona, recently helped local The Door Church strengthen the active community partnership it has cultivated for many decades, servicing the south and west sides of Tucson, in particular. But the church's original facility was woefully inadequate for the number of people attending services and outreach events.
Instead of using the seamed panels in conventional ways, the exterior utilizes a geometric pattern of different colors and orientations that connect the multiple masses of the building and various windows and doors.
In response, SDG Architecture's Scott Feltheim, ALA, NCARB, and principal architect, reports, "The new sanctuary building we designed allows the congregation to engage in ways unavailable before. For example, the size of the sanctuary allows for more events, such as music concerts and dramas, to be presented to the whole community instead of being a more selective audience."
Another example is a new coffee and snack bar in the larger lobby that is now open to the community during the week. "The enlarged and enhances outdoor courtyard has multiple attributes for locals to engage, including an artificial grass area with shade tress, as well as a new outdoor stage for smaller concerts and events. The building itself is designed to bring a new presence to the long vacant corner of two major roads in the city. Now the new exterior lighting and landscaping have beautified the corner," says Feltheim.
Materials and technologies
The Door Church project utilizes building and technology in a different way than traditional church construction, Feltheim reports. "In order to both save construction costs as well as provide a new aesthetic from traditional churches in the area, a prefabricated metal building system was utilized. One aspect was to design the needed seating arrangement around the free columns spanning limits of the structural stem while staying within pre-engineered cost limits. The exterior siding was another method of innovation: instead of using the seamed panels in conventional ways, the exterior utilizes a geometric pattern of different colors and orientations that connect the multiple masses of the building and various windows and doors. This visually makes the overall building warmer and better human-proportioned instead of the ‘warehouse’ affect," he says.
Internally, the teams of engineers, the acoustician, and AV consultants worked to integrate the various needs of visual displays and proper speaker placement. As Feltheim says, "The primary goal was for the congregation members to experience a service where technology and architecture worked cohesively, instead of seeing obvious visual fixes to the sanctuary after AV was installed."
Learn more about SDG Architecture as well as The Door Church.
