Consider the Community
When building your church or and addition to your church, it is important to remember the community in which you live. While doing some research for another article, I cam across this commentary from a blogger and pedestrian in Brookline Village, MA.
She says,
These days, lots of folks passing through Brookline Village or visiting Town Hall, Pierce School or the Library stop dead in their tracks and gaze up at the strange, almost windowless gray cube that seems to almost float, detached from its surroundings, hugging the sidewalk. The exterior material appears to be something with a matte finish that resembles cardboard and despite its cube-like visage, its shape actually includes a jaunty angle or two.
We learn from the sign posted on the corner of Harvard and Pierce that this is part of the new Community Center addition for the Korean Church at this site.
Well and good, but then she goes on to describe her feelings about his structure.
It is hard to see how these structures “fit” into the context of their surroundings. While this is not a blanket condemnation of modern architecture, I have to say there was no attempt to design the buildings or to design the site layout in a way that would in any way create a pleasing street scape or pedestrian experience. In fact, I don’t think the building’s users will find much delight here either, considering all that harsh concrete, lack of windows and strangely shaped interior space.
Apparently, due to certain codes in Brookline Village, this structure was perfectly well within the rights of the church to build, but the blogger really doesn’t like what it does to the look of a streetscape that is rather traditional in appearance.
The cube itself is a monolithic presence, kind of like a big stereo speaker in a room of antique furniture, as we look across the street to the fine historic red brick buildings, with their inviting doors and windows, fine detailing and timeless simplicity. It would have been entirely possible to design a modern structure that nonetheless fit in this setting. Had it had some elements remotely in common with the structures in the vicinity, namely the original church, the house on Holden, or the brick buildings on Harvard, be it materials, height, massing, roof height and angle, the rhythm of windows, shape, form, etc. But these structures have none of these.
Though the writer resigns herself to having the building, it appears that this church has lost her as a member, and potentially others because of their choice of building.Churches need to attract, even in the design of their buildings, people to come and visit, to want to use their space for non-religious uses, to want to have that church as a part of their community, and to be seen as a an asset to the welfare of everyone, Christian or not.
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